


I Met the Wolf Alone and Was Devoured in Peace

by thescandaloflesbianism



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Drama & Romance, Explicit Language, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Food, Guns, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn, Smoking, Strangers to Lovers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 46,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescandaloflesbianism/pseuds/thescandaloflesbianism
Summary: Weeks after more than half of mankind disappears overnight, Zelda Spellman decides to embark on a long journey that will hopefully take her to her sister's farm, hundreds of miles away from her own home. The woods may be scary, but the little Southern towns she has to cross are far more dangerous. Her peregrination, however, could become less daunting with the right survivors by her side.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 249
Kudos: 189





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is loosely based on Christina Henry's _The Girl in Red_ , a post-apocalyptic retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, so you might notice some similarities. This is a non-magical AU I've been wanting to write for literal months and I'm glad I can finally unleash this horror into the world. The (excessively long) title is from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I chose some basic tags, but I'll be adding more as the story progresses. Thank you in advance to all those who will read this!

Zelda had loathed walking for as long as she could remember: never a fan of sports involving copious amounts of sweat and the possibility of breaking one's leg, she would always choose to remain at home and read a book in the comfort of her own bedroom on those summer weekends when, back in her childhood years, her father and siblings would go hiking in the woods. Not even her complicated liaison with Faustus – a man who, despite his many faults, liked to keep himself in shape – had managed to turn her into a fan of physical exercise and his several attempts at convincing her to sign up for yoga classes at the local studio had been consistently unsuccessful.

"A fat lot of good that would have done," Zelda whispered to herself, refusing to admit that Faustus' suggestions might not have been completely pointless. "As if knowing how to touch the back of my head with my feet would be of any use, now."

As she said so, distracted by the memory of that age-old quarrel with her former partner, she almost tripped on an exposed tree root, catching herself just before she fell on a pile of dried leaves. Mentally cursing herself, she stumbled backward, her breathing increasing slightly: she had to stop reminiscing about the past and focus on the road, for God only knew what would happen if she accidentally scraped her knee and nasty bacteria started colonizing her wound. She did have some antibiotics with her, that was true; but she didn't know much about medicine – not as much as her sister did, anyway – and it had been days since the last time she'd stumbled upon a pharmacy that hadn't been ransacked.

That last thought did, however, give her some hope: she knew that there must be other survivors in the area – Hilda had managed to contact her during the first hours of that absurd catastrophe, shortly before all phones and the Internet had stopped working – and the looting of shops and buildings was a sign that someone else had been there before her. Problem was, the only humans she'd encountered since she'd embarked on that foolish voyage – two aggressive-looking men driving around a little Southern town in a pickup truck – hadn't seemed too friendly. She shivered, remembering how she'd hidden inside a dusty wooden shed, wrinkling her nose at the rotting smell while she had waited for the two men to leave. They had left, eventually, but only after spending hours inside a small supermarket to steal every last canned good and shooting at the windows of all the abandoned cars still on the main street with their rifles. That night, Zelda had chosen to camp outside the neighboring forest and had gone to bed hungry, having eaten nothing but a miserable can of cold peas all day; though, truth be told, she hadn't been able to sleep that well at all.

The woman couldn't remember exactly how long it had been since the last time she'd gotten her hands on something decent to eat, but, according to her calculations and poor orienteering skills, another rural town was a few miles away from her current position and she could likely find some shops there. She felt somewhat ashamed, then, because she had a good amount of just-add-water meals and protein bars in her backpack and she was sure that there must be people far less prepared than she was, starving and wilting away in some remote corner of the world, but she would be lying if she tried to convince herself that she wasn't craving a greasy McDonald's burger, possibly accompanied by fries and a can of Coke.

Her stomach let out a low gurgle and she checked her wristwatch: it wasn't even close to dinnertime yet, so she grabbed her filtered water bottle – the only useful thing Faustus had ever stolen from the sporting goods shop he used to work at, really – and took a long sip, hoping it would help her stomach hold out for a little longer. While she did so, she let her gaze wander, exploring her surroundings, and she spotted a shiny black object in the distance, about half a mile away from where she stood, in the middle of a gravel road. She'd sworn to herself that she would never travel so close to man-made paths, fearing another encounter with the threatening men she'd seen days before, but there was a tiny possibility that the unidentified entity could be a car – it looked like it, at least – and she would have traveled much faster if she'd been able to steal it. Even an old motorcycle would have been enough, though she didn't have the faintest idea of how to drive one.

Putting her water bottle back into her bag, she decided to get closer to the alleged car, listening carefully for any noise that might betray the presence of other human beings. The woods around her were eerily quiet: with the exception of the occasional bird's mating call, only the sound of the swift river flowing nearby could be heard in the background. Weeks before, when a big portion of the population had mysteriously disappeared without a trace, she'd often wondered if the same thing had happened to animals as well: she'd spotted a few birds and squirrels during her long journey across the forest, but not as many as she'd expected. Insects, on the other hand, seemed unaffected by the great tragedy, as her itchy bite marks could clearly testify. At least she'd never met bears and other wild creatures, which had been a small blessing.

Nearing the object, she could finally see that it was, indeed, an abandoned car. It wasn't uncommon to find empty vehicles on formerly busy streets, for there must have been several individuals driving around the country when most people had disappeared, even if it had happened in the middle of the night. She forced herself not to think about that first day and the hopelessness she'd felt when she'd understood that Faustus wasn't the only man who had gone missing. Directing her attention toward the car in front of her, she saw that its state was quite decent – no flat tires or local animals that had chosen it as their new nest – and that the keys were still in the ignition. The person driving it must have stopped on the side of the road shortly before the catastrophe, though she didn't know why: those days, most cars were inoperable, as they had crashed against the nearest buildings, lampposts, or trees once their owners had vanished. She asked herself if, perhaps, there had been some warning signs, which had allowed the unnamed driver to step out of the car before disappearing forever. In truth, she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Flopping into the driver's seat, she took a moment to appreciate the comfort of a soft surface after days of sleeping on twigs and branches. It took her a few tries to get the car going and, once the engine started rumbling, she saw that she had barely enough gas to get to the nearest speck of civilization. "Just my luck," she said to no one but herself, checking the map she'd stolen from her town's library. Realizing that driving, even if only briefly, was still better than walking all the way there, she threw all her things in the passenger seat and put her foot on the pedal.

The sun had begun to set when she arrived at her destination. The car had given out after less than half an hour and she'd enormously miscalculated the amount of time it would take her to get there, but she'd reached the village, at last. The town itself was no more than a couple of houses and a tall church, but it would do. Careful not to make a sound, she crossed the decrepit city center, holding onto the large kitchen knife she'd taken for defense purposes before leaving her home. The place looked like a ghost town and she prayed that meant that no one had raided the small grocery store she'd seen when she'd first walked past the old welcome sign. She'd go there tomorrow: it was getting dark and she didn't want to risk running into any aggressive survivors at nighttime. Instead, she started looking around for potential houses where she could get a few hours of uncomfortable sleep.

She settled on a white semi-detached house with a garden that must have once been rather beautiful, but was, by then, nothing but a cluster of yellow weeds. She hoped the door would be unlocked and her prayers were answered when she easily entered the foyer without needing to shatter any windows, as she'd already done far too many times in the past. The house itself looked rather elegant, in spite of the dust and the bittersweet smell of places that had been locked shut for too long. Not wanting to waste any time, she headed directly toward the kitchen and meticulously scanned the shelves: there was a lot of food past its expiration date, indeed, but also some canned meat, a vast assortment of nuts, and two packs of beef jerky. She devoured the first two as if they were the best meals she'd ever tasted, but kept the rest of the meat for later. Having spotted a case of bottled water, she grabbed it and began to look for the bathroom, unable to resist the temptation to take a shower, albeit cold.

As she was pouring bottle after bottle of water on her shivering body, standing in the middle of a rusty bathtub, she thought she heard a sharp thump coming from the adjacent building. Pausing, then, she listened attentively, but no other sound followed and she chose to believe that her mind had merely been playing tricks on her. Quickly drying herself up with towels she found in a closet in the master bedroom, she put on a short nightgown that was a bit too tight for her and slipped under the covers. The bed was unmade, the mattress too spongy and the room itself rather chilly, but she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, her knife sitting on the bedside table next to her. Her dreams, that night, were filled with people she'd never met, yelling and accusing her of breaking into their house, of stealing their things without a second thought. In the nightmare, she tried to apologize, begging them to forgive her, telling them that she had lost loved ones, too, but her words kept falling on deaf ears, covered by loud, rhythmical thuds. When she awoke, at last, she was relieved to see that there was no one else in the room with her, but the dull sound seemed to continue. In her dazed state, she finally realized that someone was outside, knocking on the front door. As it turned out, she was not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you just read this because I've been talking about it non-stop for weeks on Twitter, I am genuinely sorry for being the most annoying person on the planet. I hope you enjoyed it, at least!


	2. Chapter 2

Zelda wanted to scream, but she knew that any kind of noise would have revealed her existence to the person standing outside the house she'd broken into the night before. She wished she could cry, then, and smoke a cigarette, too, before pulling herself together and deciding that she wasn't going to do any of those things, because Zelda Spellman had many faults, but she was certainly no coward. She grabbed her backpack, but then realized that it would have been nothing but a nuisance in a physical altercation – not that she knew the first thing about fighting, of course – and switched it for her knife. The thudding at the front door was loud and persistent and it seemed to match the rhythm of her heart. The temptation to go back to bed and pretend that she wasn't there was strong, but she was aware that she couldn't ignore the stranger on the other side of the door forever. Besides, murderers and men with rifles did not tend to knock before entering private property, did they?

Feeling as if she were about to expel the meager contents of her stomach at any second, she made her way downstairs, her whole body trembling. All the curtains in the house had been drawn and the shutters had been closed by the vanished owners, so Zelda couldn't even get a glimpse of whoever was knocking on the door. Swallowing her fear, she approached the entrance, but froze once her hand touched the handle: in a flash, the events of the previous night played again in her mind and she couldn't remember locking the door, which meant that the stranger could have easily gotten in without breaking a sweat, had they wanted to. But they hadn't, and had been politely trying to attract her attention for the past ten minutes instead, knocking on the door as if they weren't both living in a post-apocalyptic world.

Somewhat reassured by that notion, she slowly turned the handle, jumping back once the door opened and pointing her weapon straight at whoever would be standing in front of her. "Don't you dare take a step closer," she yelled, startled by the high pitch of her own voice. "I have a knife and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"I can see that," the stranger replied. "I, on the other hand, am not armed and I have come in peace. You can search me, if you'd like. I don't even have a pocketknife on me."

Zelda refused to lower her guard, but was captured by the sight of another human being after days of complete isolation. The thin, dark-haired woman facing her didn't seem half as frightened as she was and her nonchalant demeanor surprised her greatly. Keeping her weapon steady despite her mild panic, she took a moment to stare at the stranger from head to toe and said, "What do you want from me?"

"Good God," the woman exclaimed, furrowing her brow. She lifted her hands in the air to show her that she had nothing to hide, but looked visibly annoyed. "You're not very warm with strangers, are you?"

"Answer my question," Zelda insisted, no room for niceties and well-mannered introductions in a time like that. "And be quick. I have to be out of this place by midday and you're wasting my time," she added, noticing that the sun was already high in the sky.

"Alright." The woman tried to get closer to her, but Zelda strengthened the grip on her knife and retreated. Clicking her tongue, the strange lady gave up on her attempt at a first friendly encounter and explained, "My name is Lilith. I spent the past two nights in the house next to yours and I saw you arrive yesterday evening. You seemed innocuous enough, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to talk to you in the morning. A severe lapse in my judgment, clearly."

"Evidently," Zelda confirmed. "How do I know that this is not a trick? You could be acting as human bait to lure me into some sort of trap." Her mind wandered back to the men she'd spotted days before.

"Well, I have been called many horrendous names in my life, but _human bait_ is a new one," the woman snickered and Zelda asked herself how she could be so calm in that situation. She was practically holding her at knifepoint, for Christ's sake! "I swear to you that I'm no bait, but your suspicions are rather flattering. Would you fall for it, if that were the case?"

"What?" Zelda exclaimed, worried that her jaw might hit the floor. What was wrong with that woman? She wondered if she wasn't quite right in the head. "Please, tell me that you weren't attempting to make a joke."

"Thought it would ease the tension. My bad," she replied, suppressing a smile. Her messy curls looked as if they hadn't seen a hairbrush in a while, but they did not seem too unkempt. Wild, perhaps, but not untidy. "Look, I'm clearly not here to harm you, so you could at least lower your weapon. I saw you and I thought we could cooperate, that's all."

"I travel alone," Zelda immediately answered, but did as she was told and placed the knife on a nearby end table. She wanted to get away from that woman as soon as possible, but felt drawn to her, as well. Regardless, she couldn't afford to lose any more time and said, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have things to do and I suggest you go back to whatever you were doing before you chose to bother me."

"Come on," the other woman said, blocking the door with her foot. "In case you haven't noticed, half the planet has disappeared. Even more than half, I suspect. I couldn't believe my luck when I spotted you yesterday and it would be nice to have someone to talk to. I haven't had a coherent conversation with anyone since the day everything went to shit."

Zelda grimaced, torn between her need to slam the door shut and her desire to keep talking to that peculiar, infuriatingly bold woman. She opened the door a little, but didn't step out on the threshold. "I have a long way to go and I can't have anyone slowing me down. I go everywhere on foot, spend the night in the woods and eat canned food, so I doubt you'd like to accompany me on my journey," she concluded, headed inside.

"Please," the woman pleaded, brushing her fingers against her arm. The sudden gesture sent a shiver down Zelda's spine, for it had been a long time since she'd last been touched by someone. "I have no one. I've been out here on my own for weeks and I'd follow you to the end of the world if that meant having some company. Besides, I have a feeling that you might not be much more trained for this than I am," she added, eyeing her as if she were judging her physical shape.

On any other occasion, Zelda would have felt insulted by that statement, but she had to admit to herself that there was some truth hidden behind what the woman had said: she was in no way prepared for whatever lay ahead and this Lilith character truly wasn't the worst survivor she could have met that morning. She seemed to be non-threatening, at least, and her lean legs and athletic body suggested that she could endure walking and living in the wilderness far better than Zelda herself. She tore her eyes away from the woman's figure, hoping that she hadn't been caught staring, and looked at her own sore body, tired and covered in bruises after she had been forced to spend such a long time away from civilized society. She felt almost ashamed of it, then, even if she knew that, considering the state of things in that very instant, she had no reason to.

"Don't you have anywhere to go at all?" Zelda asked. "Didn't you contact anyone before all communications were cut off?" The question had sounded like a reprimand and that made her feel guilty, as it was easy to imagine that not everyone had been able to phone their relatives and friends as she had. Most survivors were, in fact, completely and utterly alone and she suspected that Lilith – if that was even her real name, as Zelda knew that it was better not to give out such personal details to strangers – belonged to this last category.

"I tried to. Nobody answered." The other woman briefly diverted her gaze from her. "Did you?"

"I contacted my sister. Or, better, she phoned _me_. I was far too hysterical to do the rational thing and dial her number." Zelda considered whether or not it would be safe for her to divulge further information and decided that, had Lilith truly been a bait, she would have been attacked already. Putting her distrust aside, she explained, "She owns a self-sufficient farm a couple of hundred miles away from here. We decided that I would get there, one way or another, so that we could figure everything out together. We only talked for a few minutes, but I know she's safe, at least."

"You're very lucky, indeed," Lilith commented. Zelda sensed a certain discomfort in her words, coated with something that felt very close to envy. "I suppose I should go, then. Sorry for keeping you and I wish you a safe trip."

Zelda watched the woman as she began to walk away. "No, wait," she said, surprising both Lilith and herself. "I believe I should... apologize. For the way I reacted, I mean. And introduce myself, too. I'm Zelda." Her intention not to tell Lilith her real name had lasted two whole minutes before flying right out of the window. She pulled down the hem of her nightgown, abruptly aware that she was standing half-naked in front of a stranger. End of the world or not, she still had some dignity. "The only men I have met since everyone vanished did not seem too welcoming. They had weapons and drove around in a pickup truck. You can't blame me for assuming you were as dangerous as they were."

"Oh, those nasty militia groups," Lilith commented. "I've seen two of them, so far. A bunch of chickens who started acting tough after they stole some guns and decided to raid supermarkets of all the essentials. I'm just glad they didn't see _me_."

"Yes," Zelda considered. "I can't even begin to imagine what they would do if they managed to get their hands on a woman." She shuddered at the thought, but then realized that her whole body was shivering. She'd been standing outside in nothing but a nightdress for at least fifteen minutes and she missed the warmth of her bed. "Look, I'm not sure what to do here. I don't trust you fully, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to do part of the journey together. You might find somewhere you'd like to settle down on the way to my sister's farm. Lots of empty cabins around there, no doubt."

"That would be ideal." The brunette smiled. "If you'll have me, of course."

"You're fairly insistent, so I don't really feel like I have a choice," Zelda said, stepping back inside and holding the door open so that Lilith could go in as well. "Even if I thought you were going to murder me up until a few minutes ago."

"As if you weren't the one who answered the door holding a butcher's knife." Lilith eyed the weapon, touching the handle. Zelda gasped, her gut suddenly going cold. The other woman paused before lifting it, seeing the terror in Zelda's expression. Laughing, she said, "Alright, wrong move. I should _not_ have touched that instants after you allowed me inside. Forgive me, but I'm curious by nature."

"I'm regretting this already," Zelda breathed out, wiping away a layer of cold sweat from her forehead. She knew, by then, that Lilith wasn't going to hurt her, but being careful was always the best policy. "Are you even prepared for a journey through the woods? Do you have a backpack? Food? Anything useful at all?"

"You have absolutely zero faith in me, don't you? I'd feel offended, if I didn't find it so amusing." The woman clicked her tongue again – a tic of hers, as Zelda would later learn – and headed toward the living room, plopping down on the couch as if she owned the place. Zelda, at least, respected the quiet sacredness of the houses she broke into and acted as if she were a gracious guest in someone else's home. Which, in a way, she was. "I have a bag I've been carrying around since this whole thing started," Lilith continued. "It contains a thermal blanket, canned food, clothes, a solar-powered flashlight I stole from someone's fancy villa, and a copy of Virginia Woolf's _Orlando_ that I hope I can finish reading before I die. What else do I need?"

"A tent would be useful, for a start. You should also get a filtered water bottle, unless you want to have a really bad time after drinking water out of a scenic spring." Zelda rolled her eyes, but was admittedly intrigued by the woman's choice to bring Woolf's _Orlando_ with her. She hadn't put any books in her backpack, afraid that they would be too heavy, and missed reading terribly.

"Haven't had the runs so far, but thank you for the advice," the brunette grinned.

"You're disgusting," Zelda said, not wanting to think about anyone's bowel movements but her own. Surviving in the wilderness was already revolting enough and she had no need for a sarcastic, impertinent woman making unfunny observations such as that one.

"And you're a prude," Lilith teased again. "As for the tent, I can probably find one at the local store. I think I saw a camping section the last time I went there. There's still a lot of food inside, by the way. We should stop there, once we get going," she suggested, getting up from the sofa and walking in the direction of the door. "I have to pack up my stuff. You should probably put some clothes on, in the meantime. Not that I would complain, should you choose to leave the house wearing that lovely negligee."

"You're hilarious." Zelda looked away, not wanting Lilith to see that her cheeks had gained a faint shade of red. "Right. Let's do this, then. Meet me here as soon as you're ready. And don't forget that I can always change my mind about letting you come with me."

"Yes, ma'am," Lilith smiled, closing the door behind her. "See you when you're dressed."

"Not funny!" Zelda snapped, but the woman was already out of earshot. Walking up the stairs to collect her things, her face still flushed, she couldn't shake off the feeling that she'd just made a terrible mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Speaking of mistakes, I have once again tricked myself into replicating my favorite ship dynamic, which is the one where one of the characters is an absolute gremlin and the other is an emotionally constipated idiot. For what it's worth, I had a ball writing this. See you when I acquire enough mental stability to write more!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If my Zelda Spellman is sounding a little bit like Bree Van de Kamp, that might be related to the fact that I recently started a Desperate Housewives rewatch and I'm obsessed with puritanical suburban white women. In my defense, I'm gay and easily influenced by my fleeting interests. Anyway, I do hope you will enjoy this new chapter and feel free to leave a comment if you want!

"You're going too fast," Zelda panted, feeling drops of sweat run down the sides of her forehead. The temperature was too low for her to be sweating like that and she would catch a cold at that rate, but the damned woman in front of her had no regard for her well-being. "I get it, God! I shouldn't have implied that you were going to slow me down when we first met." Her voice had a whiny stain to it, which she hated, but couldn't control. "Come on, Lilith! I'm hyperventilating."

"You're being dramatic," Lilith commented, but stopped and waited for Zelda on top of a mossy rock. Despite her attempts at masking it, Zelda could spot the badly-hidden grin on her face, which infuriated her even more. "I was under the impression that you wanted to reach your sister's farm as soon as possible."

"I do, but I don't want to lose a lung in the process," Zelda said, out of breath. Taking advantage of the short break, she took a large gulp from her water bottle. They would have to stop again later so that she could relieve herself, but she wasn't going to die of thirst to please Lilith and her absurd walking pace. "I used to be a heavy smoker, too. My body isn't accustomed to all of this and it would be nice if you took that into consideration instead of running like a maniac half a mile in front of me."

"I didn't take you as one for lethal vices." Lilith arched one eyebrow, having likely ignored everything else that Zelda had said, seemingly fascinated by that detail of her life.

"Smoking is only deadly if nothing else gets you first." Zelda had spent many years listening to her sister as she went off on tangents on why she should quit, which meant that she always had a comeback ready. "Considering our current situation, that'll probably be the case. Besides, it would have been silly to occupy precious space in my bag with lighters and packs of cigarettes. Or books, for that matter."

"It's  _ one _ book, Zelda. How many times do we need to have this conversation?" The brunette rolled her eyes, resuming to walk at an even faster pace. "I'm not leaving my copy of  _ Orlando _ behind. Do you want me to die of boredom in the middle of the woods?"

"Better than dying of hunger because we didn't bring enough supplies with us," Zelda muttered, but Lilith was no longer listening, captivated by the sight of a small squirrel gathering acorns and nuts under a large tree.

Zelda shook her head, both amused and annoyed. She'd been walking alongside Lilith in the forest for three days by then and, while she was grateful for her company, she was certain that, had the circumstances been different, she wouldn't have spent one more second with that unrefined woman. In her previous life, back when she would spend her mornings working part-time at an antique shop and occasionally brunching with her neighbors, she was careful to stay away from people like Lilith. She was no snob, naturally, and her own on-and-off partner, Faustus, had been anything but classy, but she held herself to certain standards: she liked sharing a glass of white wine with her friends in the evenings, taking slow walks around the local park after dinner and crafting her own Christmas and Easter decorations. She'd been raised by parents who believed that girls shouldn't curse like sailors or discuss personal and rather uncomfortable matters – all things that Lilith did without an inch of shame – and, even if she'd realized a long time before that women were, in fact, allowed to behave in all the ways men could, her face still reddened when the brunette made crass observations and talked too freely about subjects that Zelda believed should remain private.

If Lilith was equally fed up with Zelda's own personality, she was hiding it quite well: of course, she would never lose a chance to make sardonic remarks that drove Zelda insane, but the comments never had a mean edge to them. It was mere friendly banter, though they weren't technically friends. In truth, they reminded her of the way Faustus used to speak to her, even if his words hurt her deeply, at times, while Lilith's never did. In fact, she often had to restrain herself from laughing, not wanting her companion to take her delight as an encouragement to become even more vulgar. Obviously, she wouldn't call it flirting, either. She'd never had that sort of thoughts toward other women and the simple idea made her gut twist. It would be a while before she realized that the warm feeling at the pit of her stomach that spiked whenever Lilith forced her to let out a laugh she could no longer hold back wasn't necessarily a bad one.

Thoughts of Lilith aside, she couldn't wait for their journey to be over: her legs hurt after walking in the wilderness for weeks and she couldn't stand to sleep in her cold, small tent any longer. Lilith had insisted that they should steal a larger one that could comfortably fit them both, but Zelda, not wanting to sleep next to a virtual stranger and unwilling to carry a heavier package, had firmly refused. Having to carry more provisions than her traveling partner because that stubborn woman wanted to take her stupid novel with her was bad enough already. She wished she could ask Lilith to lend her the book, at least, but borrowing things from others was, in a sense, an act of intimacy and she wasn't sure she wanted to grow closer to her. She  _ was _ going to leave her, after all, sooner rather than later, and Zelda Spellman truly saw no point in growing fond of people who were destined to go their own way and would eventually leave her behind.

"You never told me your last name."

"What?" Zelda asked, Lilith's question startling her out of her thoughts. "My last name?"

"Yes. The name that comes after your first, in case you're not familiar with the definition," Lilith mocked her, grabbing a fallen branch and beginning to use it as a walking stick to support herself. "We've been out here for days and I don't even know your full name. A bit weird, don't you think?"

It  _ was _ weird, Zelda considered. Weeks before, she knew the first, middle, last, and maiden names of all the nice, churchgoing ladies in her neighborhood, but the idea of asking Lilith what her full name was had never crossed her mind. To her, she was only Lilith. "It's Spellman," she said.

"You're fucking with me." Zelda grimaced at the profanity. "That can't be a real last name."

"I can assure you that it's very real. Dates back to England in the Middle Ages, though I've personally never set foot outside of this country," Zelda explained, slightly offended by the other woman's reaction. "What about you? What's your last name?"

"Don't have one," Lilith replied, nonchalantly.

"That's impossible. Everyone has one," Zelda insisted, her irritation growing. "Don't tell me you want  _ that _ to remain a secret, after everything you have overshared since the instant you knocked on my door." She did know too much about Lilith by then, ranging from her previous – very active, or so it seemed – sexual life to her curious and somewhat fascinating interests. Strangely enough, she had yet to open up about her family and marital status, but Zelda knew it was only a matter of time before she would be flooded with bits of information about that aspect of her life, too. Despite all of that, the fact that she wouldn't share a silly detail like her last name with her made her tense.

"You're right. I shouldn't ask questions I'm not willing to answer myself," Lilith said, slowing her pace. Zelda mentally thanked her for that. "I did have one, technically. I took my husband's last name when we got married and I kept it after the divorce. He turned out to be quite an impressive piece of trash, however, so I would rather not use that one." Her tone shifted imperceptibly, but Zelda, who had listened to nothing but that woman's voice for hours and hours, noticed the change. "Believe it or not, his name was Lucifer. I should have realized that it wasn't going to work out the moment he introduced himself," she laughed.

"You can't say that the universe didn't give you any warning signs," Zelda smiled, but she wanted to divert the conversation, afraid that the topic would make Lilith uneasy. On her part, the brunette had done nothing but make her uncomfortable up until that very second, but Zelda had no desire to do the same to her. "What about your maiden name?"

Lilith laughed again, but it was a bittersweet, hopeless laugh and Zelda felt a stabbing sensation in her chest when she heard the sound. "Let's say that my parents weren't that great, which is why I'm not very fond of that one, either. I really lucked out in life, if you can't tell." The woman took out a protein bar from her bag and offered half of it to Zelda, who accepted, surprised by the simple gesture. "I imagine last names won't mean much in this post-apocalyptic reality of ours, anyway."

"I supposed they won't." Zelda bit into the bar, but the strange feeling in her gut had returned and, suddenly, she wasn't that hungry at all.

"Don't take me for a heartless monster, but, sometimes, I'm almost glad that they're gone," Lilith continued, not meeting Zelda's eye. "Not all of them, by all means. I miss some people so much that I fear my heart will break if I think too often about them." She gave a sad smile. "Man, I can't believe I started talking about all this sentimental crap. Let's keep going, shall we? It's getting chilly and I want to find a good spot where we can settle for the night."

Zelda had assumed that Lilith had lived a boring, suburban existence just like she had before the mass disappearance, but that last conversation had changed her perspective. She thought of her own mother, then, who always accused her of being self-absorbed and of seldom remembering that other people did not have it as easy as she did; Zelda, like all daughters, had never taken her mother's words seriously, for she knew that everyone in her small town – relatives, friends, acquaintances – was living a copycat version of her own dull life. The most trouble she'd ever been in was when Faustus had been caught stealing from his workplace – a thing he used to do regularly, as she later learned, not because he was a kleptomaniac, but because he was, deep inside, not too good of a person – and, even then, the matter had been settled privately and no one in her close circle had ever suspected a thing. Zelda had never had to think about disparities and injustices, either social or economic, and she'd strongly believed that people who found themselves in difficult situations simply weren't trying hard enough to get out of them. That was, of course, until she'd found herself strolling through the woods with someone who didn't come from her own sheltered community and had been forced to remember that her experiences were not universal.

It was silly, but her realization was bringing her to tears. She swiftly wiped them away, not wanting Lilith to notice. "This is a good one, actually," she said, cursing the tremble in her voice. They'd stumbled upon a secluded clearing and the ground looked even enough to pitch their tents. "It will be dark soon and I'm tired."

Lilith nodded, removing her backpack and stretching her back. Zelda took a couple of canned goods out of her bag and realized that they were running out of food. She hated the thought of having to pass through old towns and break into supermarkets to acquire new supplies, but it wasn't like they had a choice in the matter. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Lilith was erecting her tent, having already pitched her own. Again, the simple act of kindness caused a knot to form in her throat and she almost slapped herself to make the sensation disappear. What in the name of God was happening to her? She didn't even cry at  _ funerals. _ She knew of women who had turned soft with age – her own mother had become horridly sensitive during the last few years of her life – and she'd expected that something such as that would happen to her as well, but she wasn't even fifty yet, for Christ's sake! Taking in a deep breath to compose herself, she grabbed the can opener and started working on the tins of food, thanking Lilith for setting up her tent and swatting away all ridiculous thoughts of tenderness and care.

They ate in silence, both too weary to say anything. Once they'd finished, Lilith complimented Zelda on her delicious home-cooked meal and Zelda smiled, in spite of herself. "If we had met before all of this, you would have loathed my cooking. I manage to make the simplest soups taste bad." She smiled, as Lilith grinned in return. "Alright, then. I think it's time to clean myself with wet wipes. I sweated like a pig today," she announced, getting up from the tree stump she'd picked as her seat for the evening. "I'm going inside my tent. Turn around, please."

"You always ask me to do that and I keep telling you that I will try my best, but my instincts might get the better of me and force me to take a peek," Lilith teased, throwing the empty cans into a trash bag and disappearing into her own tent. Zelda sighed, blushing lightly, having heard that joke several times already.

She would have sold her soul in exchange for a quiet bath in that instant, but she knew that wet wipes were the next best thing at her disposal. After quickly brushing her hair with her fingers and realizing that her ginger locks had seen better days, she took off her clothes, making a mental note to wash them thoroughly as soon as they found a clean stream of water, and started cleaning her body, taking in the sweet smell of lemon and mint. "Do you need some wipes?" she then asked. Lilith's tent was close enough that she could hear her without yelling, but the brunette seemed to lock the rest of the world out when she was reading before going to sleep, so Zelda raised her voice a little, just in case.  There was no one else around who could hear her, anyway.

"I'm good, thanks. Just used my own," Lilith answered. "God, I'm freezing in here. My teeth are chattering."

"That's a bit excessive, don't you think? It's not even winter, yet," Zelda replied, but she, too, had noticed the sharp drop in temperatures and it had worried her. What were they going to do once the weather inevitably became too cold to sleep outside? Spending the night in abandoned houses seemed too risky: it was unlikely that the men with rifles would show up again, but that didn't mean that there weren't any other aggressive survivors out there. She didn't want to die at the hands of some lunatic only a few miles away from her sister's farm. Well, maybe more than just a few miles, as it was going to take them at least another month to finally get there, but that didn't change her sentiment about not wanting to be murdered.

"We could sleep together," Lilith proposed. "I mean, _next_ to each other. You know, shared body heat and all that."

"Absolutely not," Zelda exclaimed, her cheeks feeling inexplicably hotter. The sheer nerve of that woman! "I can't think of anything less appropriate. I have another thermal blanket in my backpack, if you need it. It's not even _that_ cold."

"We're sleeping in tents in a glade after the downfall of humanity, Zelda. I couldn't care less about what is appropriate and what isn't. Plus, I don't want you to get hypothermia overnight. I can't take your blanket," Lilith responded.

"I don't know what else to tell you, then. There is no way I'm sleeping with you," Zelda said. After hearing Lilith's quiet snickering, she clarified, " _Next_ to you. Oh, you know what I meant!" She turned off the little portable light she kept in her tent and climbed into her sleeping bag, decidedly too irritated to fall asleep right away.

After a couple of minutes, she began to hear familiar rustling sounds and Lilith soon made her appearance, carrying her own torchlight, her exasperated face peeking into her tent. "I have decided to take up on your offer and use your blanket. I do think we should share it, though. I can promise you that our bodies won't even touch," she pleaded. "It's not like I'm dying to share a minuscule closed space with you, so don't flatter yourself."

"Not happening," Zelda said, turning on her side, afraid that Lilith would spot the slight embarrassment on her face.

"Fine. Feel free to freeze your ass, then," Lilith huffed, taking the blanket from Zelda's bag and closing the zipper of her tent with such force that Zelda thought the whole thing was going to collapse on her. "See if I care."

Zelda wanted to protest, but she saw no point in arguing with the other woman at that hour of the night, and, besides, her tiredness was starting to get the better of her. It had been a long day and many more lay ahead of her, which meant that she and Lilith were going to have several more occasions to fight about trivial things, if the brunette wanted to have an argument so badly. She wasn't even cold, in any case. Well, maybe only a tiny bit, but she'd rather succumb to the elements than admit that Lilith might have been right. Shivering a little, she wrapped her own thermal blanket tight around her shoulders and tried to forget about her mild discomfort, fantasizing about a life where she wasn't spending the night in the middle of a forest, with a strange woman who had a very feeble concept of boundaries and a supply of food that was only going to last them another day or two. When she opened her eyes the next morning, expecting to find Lilith gazing at her like a pesky kitten waking its owner up at sunrise, she was horrified to find an unknown male face staring back at her from the outside of her tent instead.


	4. Chapter 4

Zelda let out a scream. It hadn't been the smartest thing to do, in hindsight, but what else could she have done at a time like that? The man who was staring at her looked as if he were half-dead, but Zelda Spellman wasn't silly enough to believe in tales of zombies and undead people and knew that it was only due to undernourishment and exposure to the elements. Still, her rational approach didn't make her position any less terrifying and all she could do was try to remain vigilant while she waited for Lilith to wake up in the tent next to hers and intervene. Unless, of course, the stranger had taken care of her traveling partner already and she was about to be brutally murdered in the woods by a man who seemed anything but friendly.

He didn't have any traces of blood on him, which Zelda chose to take as a good sign. He was, however, holding a small knife, which reminded her of her own weapon, buried deep inside her backpack, currently standing in a corner of her tent, right by the entrance. Even if she'd tried to, she would have never been able to reach it without the man attacking her first. She cursed herself for having allowed her guard to drop so foolishly: she'd been extremely careful and aware of her surroundings when she was traveling alone, but Lilith and that blabbering mouth of hers had distracted her enough for that horrible situation to arise.

She attempted to talk, but her first words came out as a rasp. "Who are you?"

"Give me your supplies and I won't hurt you," the man said, ignoring her question. Zelda could hear the desperation in his voice and she almost felt sorry for him. The feeling quickly disappeared once he moved closer to her, his knife mere inches away from her neck. "All you got. Quickly."

Zelda wanted to obey, but her body was refusing to move. Her legs and arms felt numb and she wasn't sure she could even utter another sentence, let alone get up to hand over her provisions to that lunatic. "They're in the... You can... You should..." The stranger's blade was a little too close for comfort and she thought she was about to be sick. "The backpack," she finally answered, feebly pointing at her bag.

"Who else is with you? There's another tent," the man said, rummaging through every last possession she had left in that stupid world. Once he saw that she wasn't answering, he insisted, "Tell me who's with you and where they're hiding, or I will kill you right now. Tell me, I said!"

"What? I don't... I'm not..." Zelda muttered, not fully understanding the stranger's question. Where was Lilith? Had she managed to escape, leaving her completely on her own and at the mercy of that madman? How could the other woman have done something so vile? They hadn't known each other for long, that much was true; but Zelda would have tried her best to defend her, had she been in her shoes. At least, she probably would have. She could hardly protect herself, at that moment, so it was genuinely hard to tell.

"Are you deaf? I said I will fucking kill you," the stranger shouted, inching closer to her. The despair Zelda saw in his eyes was unlike anything she'd ever witnessed before, but she remained still, too frightened to say a single word.

"Get away from her or I will shoot you." The voice had come from behind the man and it took Zelda's brain a couple of seconds to recognize it as Lilith's. She could see her shadow on the wall of the tent, holding something that looked a lot like a handgun. "Who's the deaf one, now? Get away, I said!"

The man turned around, unsure at whom to point his knife. Zelda drew in a rapid breath, afraid that he would do something reckless, now that he was trapped. "Drop the bag and leave," Lilith continued, no trace of fear in her tone.

"Fuck you," the man said, holding the backpack close to his chest. Zelda wanted to make a leap toward it and snatch it from his hands to grab her own weapon, but it did not take a genius to understand that she wasn't half as brave as Lilith was and her hands weren't responding to her commands, trembling and sweating instead.

Then, the gun went off, its sound a mixture of loud fireworks and a faulty car engine. Zelda's heart jumped to her throat as she realized that Lilith had been true to her promise, but, much to her own surprise, the man didn't fall dramatically on the ground like villains from action movies did, nor was his blood splattered all over her purple sleeping bag. When he turned slowly in Zelda's direction, he seemed wide-eyed, frightened, much like what Zelda herself must have looked like right then. Letting her backpack fall on the ground, the stranger kept his blade close to his body, quickly retreating. In that instant, Zelda understood that Lilith hadn't murdered the man and that hers had merely been a warning shot.

Her ears ringing, she was struggling to hear what Lilith was saying to him. "Next time I shoot, I won't miss. I'd leave, if I were you."

"You fucking bitch," the man whispered, but his words were followed by a thud and a low whimper, which suggested that Lilith had hit him with something before letting him run away.

Zelda could barely lift herself up, feeling as if the ground under her were spinning. Managing, at last, to get out of the tent, she tripped on Lilith's foot, nearly falling into her arms. "Lilith, I... I'm... Excuse me for a second," she murmured, getting away from her and promptly emptying the poor contents of her stomach in the shadow of a birch tree.

Once she was done, she was relieved to see that Lilith was facing the other way, likely keeping an eye on the rest of the clearing to make sure that the man wouldn't be coming back. Her face was flushed like never before, but she had to approach Lilith. She'd already made herself look like a chicken in front of her and she wasn't going to make things worse by ignoring her after she'd basically saved her life. "A gun? Really?" That was not, perhaps, the best conversation starter she could have thought of.

"You're welcome," Lilith said, letting out an irritated huff.

"When were you going to tell me that you had a _gun_ with you? Don't you think that's something that you should have disclosed sooner?" Zelda asked, rage and shame swirling inside her belly. "The very first day we met, maybe?"

The brunette and her handgun were, indeed, the only reasons why she was still alive and having that argument in the first place, but the fact that Lilith had concealed something as dangerous as that from her was making Zelda see red. She was angry at Lilith for having carried a deadly weapon with her the entire time they'd known each other and having clearly chosen to hide it from her. Mostly, however, she was mad at herself for the way she'd reacted to the stranger's intrusion. She'd embarked on that journey convinced that, had a threat arisen, she would have been able to fight for her life and for the life of others, if needed. Instead, she'd remained in her little tent, shaking like a leaf, not even able to call for help. She knew, deep inside, that she was no hero; she just wasn't expecting to be that huge of a coward.

"That was a weird way of thanking me for rescuing your ass," Lilith replied, already dismantling her tent and starting to collect her things. "You were about to give some random desperate survivor all of our stuff. Unbelievable."

She wasn't, actually, because she couldn't have moved a finger to give that man her supplies even if she'd wanted to, but there was no need to clarify that. "I was handling it," she commented, but even she didn't believe it. She heard Lilith repress a sarcastic snort. "Where were you, anyway? While I was screaming bloody murder," she added, growing more uncomfortable with every new admission of her own incompetence.

"Lucky for you, I'm an early riser. I was exploring the area when I heard you," Lilith explained, starting to take down Zelda's tent as well. She didn't have to do that, but Zelda let her. Her legs were shaking and she was perched on a tree stump to prevent Lilith from noticing.

"How could you have hidden that gun from me? We agreed on being honest with each other." They hadn't, technically, but she'd assumed that they would have to be, if they had to travel hundreds of miles side by side.

"I didn't think I was ever going to use it. I stole it from a gun fanatic's house a few days before we met. I wasn't completely sure it was loaded, to be honest," the other woman said, briefly meeting Zelda's eye. "Look, I'm sorry about not telling you about it sooner, but I'm not going to sit here while you complain about the methods I employed to save your life. Let's get going."

Zelda felt tears collecting behind her eyes for the umpteenth time that week, but she bit her tongue and followed Lilith as they began to walk toward their next destination. She was perfectly aware that she hadn't thanked her yet, but her pride was preventing her from feeling anything but anger toward the woman. Picking up her backpack, she took out her butcher's knife and kept it close for protection, but she knew that it was a futile attempt at making up for the courage she hadn't been able to show before and the lump in her throat started to come back again. She swallowed her regret, feeling shaky and useless for the rest of the day as they made their way through the forest and reached the next little town on her map.

"That house looks good enough. Not too flashy and likely empty," Lilith commented, pointing at a little wooden cottage. They'd spent the entire morning and afternoon walking and Zelda, who could barely stand up straight, would have rested on a pile of rocks, had that meant that they were going to get some decent hours of sleep.

Zelda nodded. She hadn't uttered a word to Lilith since the woman had apologized to her in the glade, but the brunette hadn't appeared to be too disturbed by that. "Alright. Let's get settled," she said, preparing herself to break a large window in order to get into the house.

"Wait," Zelda spoke, annoyed that she'd had to break her self-imposed silence to stop that woman from cutting her arm open. Suddenly realizing that she'd been nothing short of childish up until then, she cleared her throat in embarrassment. "Let's see if it's unlocked, first. I bet most people around here knew each other so well that the possibility of someone burgling their homes didn't even cross their minds."

As she'd suspected, she easily opened the door and they both stepped inside the cottage. She wanted to point out to Lilith that her supposition had been correct, but she was self-aware enough to remember that she was in no position to act all mighty and rude. Instead, she inspected the house, coming to the conclusion that it had most likely been a holiday cabin. The electricity had stopped working weeks before, but she spotted some candles on an old table and lit them with one of her matches. She expected Lilith to make an inappropriate comment about the romantic atmosphere, but the woman was apparently in no mood for crass jokes. That might have been Zelda's fault, but she firmly refused to acknowledge it. If Lilith wanted to hold a grudge against her, she had all the rights to do so, and Zelda, on her part, was allowed not to care. She did care a little, of course, but she was definitely not going to make that obvious to Lilith. They were both full-grown adults, for God's sake!

"I'm going to look for some bottled water and clean myself up," Lilith said, headed upstairs. "Could you snoop around to see if there's anything we could eat? I bet a cabin like this one must be stocked with canned food."

Zelda nodded again, keeping her head down. Lilith hadn't sounded too irked, but she had noticed the tiredness in her voice. She found some supplies in the kitchen and a camping stove in a small utility room. She licked her lips at the thought of finally eating a warm dinner and started boiling a pot of water. She hadn't found any sauces in the cabinets and shelves, but plain pasta would do. She desperately wished they could take the stove with them and eat hot meals more often, but the damned thing was impossibly heavy and she didn't like the idea of having to carry it around in the wilderness. Lilith entered the room as she was draining the pasta, covered in nothing but a tiny towel.

"Oh, isn't this lovely," she commented. Zelda refused to raise her gaze, having no need to look at the woman's half-naked body, or, at least, trying to convince herself that she felt absolutely no desire to stare. "I haven't eaten pasta in such a long time. I'm starving."

Zelda wholeheartedly agreed with that last statement and they both started to eat as if they hadn't touched any sort of food in ages. She had cooked enough to feed an entire army, but they'd only had an insipid protein bar for lunch and it was _so_ nice to consume something that was neither too soggy nor too dry for once. They cleaned up their plates and ate some of the beef jerky that Zelda had found days before, occasionally exchanging polite observations and talking about their plans for the following day. A certain uneasiness was still lingering in the air and Zelda almost missed Lilith's snippy remarks, but she had her own life to worry about and wasn't going to overthink her relationship with a woman who was going to go her own way in a month or two.

The cottage had two bedrooms and Lilith had mercifully decided to let Zelda sleep in the main one, while she camped out in what had previously been the children's room. Not that Zelda would have minded sleeping in there, but it was nice to lie in a queen-sized bed after so long. The brunette entered the room as she'd just finished putting on a pink pajama she'd found in a closet, only a bit too large for her figure. "I'm off to bed," Lilith said, but didn't actually move, leaning against the door frame.

"Good," Zelda said. The other woman was wearing a black tank top and a pair of shorts that scantily covered the upper half of her toned legs. Not that Zelda was paying any kind of attention to Lilith's choice of clothing, naturally. To make sure that the woman wouldn't get any strange ideas, she immediately looked away. "Goodnight, then."

"Don't you think that we should talk?"

The question had surprised Zelda, who had been praying that the woman would simply let that whole day go. "I'm no longer angry at you, if that's what you're asking me."

"It's not," Lilith said. Her arms were crossed and she was staring at Zelda, who could hardly hold her gaze. "I don't think you're pissed at me. I think you're pissed at yourself because you're confusing a completely normal reaction like freezing in the face of danger with not being strong enough to survive this." Zelda squirmed uncomfortably in her bed, tugging at her earlobe. She hadn't asked for her private thoughts to be dissected by a poor imitation of an armchair psychologist and only wanted to shut her brain off for a few hours. "But that's none of my business and I might be talking out of my ass, as I often tend to do, so it's probably best if I go. Again, I'm sorry about the gun, but I don't regret using it."

"If that man had hurt me, would you have shot him?" The words had left Zelda's mouth in a hurry and she regretted her question the second Lilith gave her a sad smile. There was no need to dwell in hypothetical scenarios that were never going to occur, but a part of her really wanted to know.

"Yes," Lilith replied, stepping away from the door frame.

"You're telling me that you would have killed someone in cold blood?" Zelda insisted. Lilith turned toward her, arching an eyebrow and inching forward. "Have you ever done something like that before?"

"You think very highly of me, don't you? God, I'm not a criminal," the brunette answered, letting out a bitter laugh, which made Zelda feel somewhat ashamed of her inquiries. "It would have haunted me for the rest of my life, but I would have done it. I wasn't going to let that man lay a finger on you."

"Why?" Zelda asked, not understanding how a person she barely knew could be willing to sacrifice her integrity and mental stability to come to her rescue.

"Because I'm a good person, Zelda Spellman. And I believe that you would have done the same exact thing for me, in spite of what self-deprecating thoughts your little head might be filled with at the moment." That woman shouldn't have been able to read right through her like that. It made Zelda feel naked, exposed. "Goodnight, Zelda," she added, shaking her head.

"Goodnight, Lilith," Zelda said, turning her back on her. "And thank you," she whispered, but her companion had already disappeared into the other bedroom and Zelda wasn't certain she would have wanted her to hear that last sentence, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lilith managed to not-so-politely send the aggressive survivor away, but I promise you that these two won't be the only characters in this story for much longer. Thank you so much for following this story and leaving kudos and lovely comments!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-apocalyptic works almost never deal with the reality of periods after the downfall of humanity, so I'm dedicating an entire chapter to this specific topic out of sheer spite. Along with some vaguely homoerotic scenes and sad backstories, of course. You'll also find some mentions of homophobia in this part of the story, but nothing too explicit or violent. Not really an action-filled chapter, but I hope you'll still like it!

Zelda had agreed to spend two consecutive nights in the cottage they'd broken into solely because Lilith had sworn to her that they'd resume traveling as soon as the sun came up on the third day. It had been rather nice not to sleep in the woods for a change, but Zelda knew that her sister and her homely guestroom were impatiently waiting for her and she didn't want Hilda to fear that something bad had happened to her on her way to her house. She wished that she had a way to contact her, but nothing – phones, electricity, plumbing – worked anymore. The thought of moving into a self-sufficient facility like her sister's farm – where she could take long baths and eat warm food – was the only thing that she had to look forward to. In addition to being reunited with her sister, obviously, even if they'd never had the best relationship and she was certain that they would be at each other's throats for the first month or two.

Her plans, however, were momentarily ruined after her second night of comfortable sleep, when she was rudely awakened by the worst stomach cramps of her life. Well, perhaps not the most painful ones she'd ever experienced, but they were certainly not pleasant. Dragging herself inside the bathroom, fearing she'd caught a bad case of food poisoning, she soon realized that her period had decided to make an unexpected comeback. She didn't know why she was so surprised, as her doctor had last told her that she wasn't even close to entering menopause, which, after three decades of regular agony every twenty-eight days, had somewhat ticked her off. After the mass disappearance, her period had abruptly vanished as well and she'd convinced herself it must have been due to a combination of age and great amounts of stress. After all, that bloody curse had always been annoyingly on time. Evidently, her suppositions had been wrong.

Groaning, she looked inside the bathroom cabinets and found an unopened box of pads. Not her brand of choice, but she was in no position to be choosy. Cleaning herself up, she began to ponder whether it would have been smart to take one of her precious painkillers: her first-aid kit only contained the bare necessities, but she and Lilith could easily raid a pharmacy on the way to the next town. On the other hand, she was likely going to have to live through several other monthly curses in the following years and Western medicine, in a world like that one, was never a given. She couldn't afford to get addicted to pain pills because she couldn't stand the usual period cramps. Getting her act together, she not-so-elegantly crawled back into her bed, pulling the covers over her head.

Her quiet and composed suffering was soon interrupted by Lilith, who barged into the room as if she owned the place. "Zelda, it's half past ten in the morning!" The brunette opened the curtains to let the timid autumn sunshine in. "I can't believe we overslept. Well, actually, it's not that hard to believe that _I_ overslept, but I never thought that you would... Zelda, are you alright? You seem a little pale."

Zelda was aware that her companion had been far too polite, because she must have looked as if she'd just crawled up from the pits of Hell. "I'm fine," she said, but a wave of nausea surged through her and she closed her eyes, trying not to focus on the pain in her lower abdomen.

"You certainly don't look fine to me." Lilith sounded concerned. "If you have caught some sort of deadly sickness, I deserve to know. It could be contagious."

"Oh, it's not. Trust me." She started to chuckle, but another pang of pain shot through her and she whimpered softly.

"I'm not kidding." Lilith's tone had suddenly become grave. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I said." She was absolutely _not_ going to talk about her reproductive system with a person she had known for less than a week. As a teenager, she'd been taught by her mother that certain things should be hidden from others and, even if that hadn't been the case, she was far too embarrassed to discuss them with Lilith. "Leave me alone."

"Fat chance," Lilith answered, ungraciously plopping herself down on the edge of the mattress. She stared at Zelda for a second and then added, "Unless you tell me what's wrong with you, I'm not leaving this bedroom. And trust me, even if I might not seem like a patient woman to you, I can be very persistent."

Zelda, who knew, by then, how unbearably stubborn her companion could be, sighed. "If you insist," she said, keeping her eyes shut. "I'm... I'm having..." Despite her best attempts at concealing her discomfort, her round cheeks were turning pink and she desperately wanted to prevent them from becoming beet red. "It's that time of the month," she muttered. Why had she used such a stupid periphrasis? She'd sounded like a clumsy teenager telling her mother that she'd just gotten her first period and she was hating herself for it.

"That's it? Jesus Christ, Zelda! I was starting to assume the worst," Lilith cried out, but her expression became more gentle after perceiving Zelda's mild distress. "Why wouldn't you tell me that? I'll pop into the kitchen and see if I can manage to make you some tea. I have some ibuprofen in my bag, too."

"Don't do that. Don't do anything," Zelda stopped her. She was a grown woman and she didn't need to be taken care of as if she were a child. "Give me a few hours and we'll be on the road."

Lilith frowned. "You're _impossible_ to deal with. I only said that I would prepare you something hot and soothing to drink. It's not like I offered to give you one of my kidneys, Zelda. Not that I can picture you asking for that, even if you really needed it."

"Just go," Zelda replied, a bit too loudly.

The other woman glared at her one last time and left the room without saying a word. Zelda had heard the annoyance in her own voice when she'd asked her to leave and she immediately regretted not having been slightly more polite. She had merely wanted to lend her a helping hand, but Zelda hated people who couldn't take no for an answer and Lilith definitely belonged to that group. She tried to convince herself that she could sleep the pain off and that she would be perfectly fine on her own, but the truth was that Lilith's presence had distracted her and it had made her forget about her agonizing problem for the entirety of their conversation. Alone in that large bedroom, she could think of nothing but the reality of her situation and she almost shouted Lilith's name to apologize to her, but stopped herself before she could utter the word. She couldn't afford to rely on anyone but herself, even if it would have been rather nice to have someone by her side.

Besides, it wasn't like she had ever had any kind of support in her previous life, either. Faustus hadn't been keen on hearing her blabbering on and on about such personal issues and she wasn't sure that he would have understood, anyway. She'd used her period as an excuse not to have sex with him many times over the course of their troubled relationship and the man was too much of a fool to realize that she couldn't possibly have been bleeding every two weeks. Frankly, if he wasn't smart enough to know the basics of human anatomy, maybe she shouldn't have allowed him to touch her body in the first place. It was ancient history, but thinking of him still made her heart feel sour: she missed him, clearly, but, lately, she'd started to wonder if she truly wished he was with her, or if she simply wanted someone who could care for her and comfort her throughout that horrible ordeal. Not that Faustus had ever done either one of those things that well, if she had to be honest with herself. It was possible that she didn't miss anyone in particular, actually, and that she only wanted to feel loved again. Not even a lot, really. Just a little.

Shaking her head as if to swat away those wretched thoughts, she noticed that she'd started to tear up. Wiping the tears away with the back of her hands, she heard steps up the stairs. "I told you that I don't need anything," she yelled, hoping that Lilith wouldn't see that she'd been crying.

"That's too bad. You have no power over me," Lilith said, once again entering the room with no regard for her privacy. She was carrying a tray with a fuming cup that admittedly smelled good and something that looked like a pile of biscuits on top of it. "All of this should be edible. I ate a cookie too, so if they've already gone bad, we're in the same boat. I had no idea how you take your tea, so I put loads of sugar in it, just in case. You look like you need it."

Zelda couldn't tell if it was a mean comment on her deathlike appearance or her ill manners, but she did have a sweet tooth and she hadn't realized how hungry she was up until that instant. "I specifically asked you not to do any of this."

"I know. That's what makes me so nice. Now, eat something," Lilith said, jumping on the bed and placing the tray between the two of them. Grabbing a biscuit, she munched on it like a squirrel and waited for Zelda to accept her defeat and take a bite as well.

Zelda Spellman's ego was rather big, but so was her craving for a cup of herbal tea and sugar-coated cookies. "Thank you," she whispered, finally drinking the hot beverage. Lilith's manners bothered her, but she wasn't that ungrateful.

"How are the cramps going? I still have those painkillers, if you want them. It's not like I will be needing them for this kind of stuff, anyway. My period days are behind me."

"Lucky you," Zelda said, savoring her breakfast. "I don't think I'll take them. I'm doing better, now."

"Now that I've come to your rescue, you mean?" Lilith teased, lying on the mattress, her head turned in Zelda's direction. The brunette had invited herself into that room – and into her life, too – and it would have been far too hard for a pain-stricken Zelda to convince her to leave.

"Your constant chattering is surely a distraction," Zelda admitted.

"Glad to be of service," Lilith commented, hiding a grin. "I'm sure your sister won't mind if it takes you an additional day to get to her farm. You told me her name is Hilda, right?"

"Yes," Zelda replied, knowing well that she wouldn't have been able to travel in that state. A bit of rest had never killed anyone, after all. "She will understand."

Her words were followed by a short moment of silence, during which both women enjoyed their breakfast and, to an extent, each other's company. Then, Lilith said, "I can't believe your parents gave you and your sister rhyming names. Kind of tacky, if you ask me."

"They didn't," Zelda clarified, slightly annoyed by that observation. "Hilda is only a nickname. Her real name is Hildegarde and we had a brother, too. His name was Edward." She hadn't mentioned her brother to anyone in a long time and she cursed herself for bringing him up, as she was sure that Lilith was going to inquire about him and the wound – though many years had passed – was still there.

As if on cue, Lilith asked, "Did he also contact you? Or did you try to call him?"

"No," Zelda said, hoping that would be enough. It wasn't going to be, apparently, as she could see that Lilith was expecting her to elaborate. "We hadn't spoken to each other in a couple of decades before everyone disappeared and I saw no point in trying to call him. Not that I would have known his phone number or home address, in any case."

"How come?"

Zelda's heartbeat quickened. Her familiar, old guilt was resurfacing and she could never control the awful emotions that overcame her when she talked – or even thought – about her brother. "I used to think it was his fault, but that might not be entirely true." She sighed, picking up biscuit crumbs and neatly dumping them into the tray. Lilith was observing her, waiting for her to continue. "He did some things my family didn't agree with and he eventually cut all of us off."

"What sort of things? Did he murder someone?"

"No, God." Zelda breathed in. Talking about Edward always made her feel uneasy and she wasn't certain that the pain in the depths of her belly was only attributable to her cramps. "Edward was different from the rest of us. I mean, I thought he was, back then." She was feeling nauseous again, but her period had little to do with that. "Our parents were very religious. We used to go to church every Sunday and all of that. Of course, as Christians, they considered some specific acts and behaviors to be wrong. Sinful, even. My siblings and I were raised to believe the word of the Bible and I was barely an adult when it all went down, so who was I to go against what God Himself had said?"

"Was Edward gay?" Lilith asked, straightforwardly. The brunette had been carefully watching her throughout her pathetic attempt at justifying herself and Zelda had never felt more judged in her whole existence, though Lilith had yet to say anything to her. "Did they kick him out? Is that what happened?"

"More or less," Zelda said, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her head was pounding and she rued the moment she'd decided to share that part of her life with Lilith. It was far easier to keep her shame buried deep inside herself, pretending it wasn't there at all. "They did, at first. We didn't hear from him for a very long time and my parents taught me to resent him. After about ten years, we heard that he had married a nice girl from the next town over and we wanted to contact him, but he wouldn't speak to us. Hilda got in touch with him, eventually, but I don't know how their relationship truly was. I tended to avoid the topic during our weekly calls, as you can imagine."

"I certainly can't blame the guy," Lilith commented, diverting her gaze from Zelda and clicking her tongue.

"We would have welcomed him back with open arms," Zelda protested.

She knew her family had wronged her brother, but it would have been easy for Edward to put his bitterness aside and make up with them once and for all. They could have been happy again and she could have been an auntie to Edward's little girl, Sabrina. Not that she had ever met her, clearly. She'd learned about her existence from Hilda and phoning her brother to congratulate him would have seemed too strange. She'd asked for Faustus' advice too, on that occasion, and he had told her to get such silly ideas out of her stupid head, so she had done precisely that. Even so, during those first few months after her sister had told her about the birth of a niece she would never get the chance to meet, she used to think about the child often and she would find herself wishing that things were different. That _she_ was different.

"Sure, after you kicked him out and told him his love for other men was a sin! I guess your parents must have thought that he had somehow renounced his evil ways, correct?" Zelda cringed, for that was exactly what had happened. Forcing herself to look at Lilith, she realized that the woman didn't seem enraged, but the disappointment was clear on her face. "Your pious, conservative Christian family didn't even consider that your poor bother might have been bisexual and that he was still the same scared boy he was before. No wonder he distanced himself from the lot of you."

Zelda's eyes had started to prickle. "I loved my brother, Lilith," she stammered. "I wish I hadn't treated him like I did, but I was ignorant and selfish. I know better now, but it's too late." She picked up a tissue from the box on the nightstand next to her and blew her nose in it. She was ashamed to be seen by Lilith in that overtly emotional state, but her hormones and general fatigue weren't helping. "I did bad things, but I'm not a bad person."

Out of the blue, Lilith lifted her hand and let it rest on Zelda's wrist, gently stroking it with her thumb. The gesture had been quick and unexpected and, in any other scenario, Zelda would have yanked Lilith's hand away, offended that the woman had thought it appropriate to get that close to her; but she was tired and miserable, and the brunette's touch was strangely soothing. She watched the woman's fingers as they rubbed small, calming circles on her arm, as if hypnotized by the sight. Tearing her eyes away, at last, she raised her gaze and met Lilith's, who was smiling sadly at her. She didn't particularly care for that look of pity on her companion's face and she finally moved her wrist away from her, accidentally knocking over her half-full cup of tea, which left a large, wet stain on the bed.

As she was about to get up to change the sheets, Lilith stopped her and said, "No need for that. Go lie on my bed. I'll bring you a quilt and another pillow in a minute."

Zelda's first instinct was to object, but Lilith brought her index finger to her mouth as if to tell her to shush and Zelda was reminded of the intimate moment they had just shared. She didn't want to blush in front of Lilith, so she promptly left the bedroom, ready to camp out in the children's room for the rest of the day. As she was preparing herself to take a long nap, praying for a few hours of sleep during which she could forget all about her present life, Lilith entered the room, carrying a cover and a pillow, just as she'd promised. Zelda thanked her, but the woman appeared to have no intention to leave. She reached her side, sitting on the mattress, always a little too close, but never enough to make Zelda feel really uncomfortable. On the contrary, she found herself almost craving that proximity. She blamed her stupid hormones for that last sentiment, of course.

"For the record, I don't think you're a bad person," Lilith said, absentmindedly tucking her in. Zelda found that entirely unnecessary, but she didn't protest. "I've met plenty of terrible people in my life, so I have some experience in that field. All I'm saying is that I know how your brother felt and, let me tell you, being shunned by your entire family isn't in anyone's top ten favorite experiences." She placed her hand on Zelda's arm again, but, that time, Zelda didn't try to get away from her. "Get some rest. I'll wake you up when lunch is ready."

Lilith disappeared as rapidly as she'd arrived, but, for the first time since the morning she'd met that strange woman, Zelda nearly wished she hadn't left. Her cramps had subsided and she'd come to realize that she'd probably exaggerated the magnitude of her pains. The idea that being cared for by someone who genuinely wanted her to get better might have actually helped her didn't even cross her mind. She turned her back on the door, staring at the large movie posters above the bed. She fell asleep soon after, dreaming about the previous inhabitants of the cabin, as she often did when she broke into a new house, and was awakened a couple of hours later by Lilith, who greeted her with two pots of hot soup and a gentle smile on her face.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not me writing and sharing another chapter less than a week after the last one, ignoring every single one of my responsibilities and assignments. Never underestimate the power of procrastination, I guess. Things get a bit more homoerotic and certainly more complicated in this part, so I really hope you'll like it!

"Do these look edible to you? My lizard brain is begging me to eat them," Lilith said, picking a handful of red berries and dropping them into a little plastic bucket. She had stolen it a few days before from someone's wooden shed and had treated it as her most prized possession ever since. "What do you say?"

Zelda took one look at them and shook her head. "I'd say that that is a holly plant and I wouldn't eat its fruits if I were you. Unless your goal is to mess up your whole digestive system and be absolutely wretched for the rest of the day," she replied, casually flipping through the pages of the survival handbook they'd found in a supermarket they'd raided a couple of hours before.

Zelda didn't need a manual to tell her which berries were edible and which weren't, as her father had forced her to spend several weekends camping in the wilderness with her brother and sister. She'd begun to firmly refuse to go with them after she'd turned thirteen, using studying as an excuse to stay at home all day and read her favorite books, but her memory was rather good and she could still remember all the different types of flowers and herbs. That had been a blessing, really, as Lilith had decided that they should start foraging, in addition to occasionally stealing supplies from abandoned stores, but that absurd woman wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a Portobello mushroom and a fly agaric even if her life had depended on it. Which it did, as a matter of fact. It was as if Lilith was living in a magical world where everything was exciting and new, while Zelda spent her days worrying herself sick and preventing her companion from accidentally killing herself.

"They look delicious, though. I bet they taste like candy," Lilith commented, sadly dumping the contents of her bucket onto the ground. "I'm starting to think that this might not have been the best idea. There's nothing to eat around here."

"It's funny that you should say that, considering that you wouldn't listen to me when I told you that yours was the dumbest plan I'd ever heard. There's no point in foraging while we're basically on the run," Zelda reprimanded her, secretly enjoying Lilith's admission of her own poor planning abilities. "We can think about that once we're safe and steady."

"Maybe I didn't listen to you because you're always so _annoyingly_ right and I wanted to prove you wrong." Lilith's tone was excessively dramatic, which was how Zelda knew that she wasn't truly mad. The way she'd learned to perceive and interpret even the smallest changes in Lilith's voice unsettled her, but it was a useful skill. "Besides, I'll have to fend for myself, eventually. You're going to stay with your sister, but I will need to find myself a little cabin and make it as self-sustainable as possible."

"I'm sure Hilda will agree to lend you some of her chickens and a few other dirty farm animals," Zelda said, almost tripping on a fallen branch. Lilith caught her just in time, grabbing her arm. Zelda thanked her, nodding, and resumed to walk at a slightly faster pace, breathing in deeply.

She'd been aware of the fact that Lilith was going to leave her from the very beginning of that journey, but, after having spent weeks by her side, it was hard to imagine a life without her in it. That woman was a constant distraction, sharing every silly thought that crossed her mind with her and forcing her to rest for longer periods of time than she would have liked to. She wouldn't stop making crude comments about her natural needs and she'd picked up the habit of raiding all the closets of the houses they broke into and showing Zelda the clothes she thought would suit her – a gesture that had embarrassed her, initially, but she'd soon started to appreciate, as it was pleasant to know that there was someone out there who cared about her, even in that scary, miserable world.

Still, she couldn't stand Lilith's weird obsession with complimenting her appearance at random times during the day: the first morning she'd told her she looked beautiful, moments after waking up, Zelda had nearly smacked the brunette across the face, certain that she was making fun of her. Once she'd realized that Lilith's words had been genuine, her cheeks had reddened. She had looked far from gorgeous in that instant and she had wondered why the other woman would say something like that to her. She hadn't considered the possibility that, sometimes, people could be nice to each other, not wanting anything in exchange for their kindness. Some people, she would later learn, were just good.

Deep within herself, however, she felt that her attitude toward Lilith had changed and, at times, when the woman joked about the two of them sleeping in the same tent for additional warmth, she almost found herself agreeing to that inappropriate proposal, wanting to be close to her, to fall asleep next to another human being again. Her big, incurable loneliness was the only cause of such thoughts, of course. Even so, she had noticed that, although the blue feelings that had been following her since the beginning of that awful adventure hadn't disappeared completely, their weight had somewhat been lifted from her since her first encounter with Lilith. The gloominess remained there, buried inside her broken heart, but Lilith could make her forget about it for a little while. Even when they fought, whether it was about huge or insignificant things, she felt alive for the first time in months – years, actually, because Zelda Spellman hadn't felt like the life she was living was truly her own in quite a long time.

"What are you cooking up in that scheming brain of yours?" Lilith's voice brought her back to reality. "You're not mad because I touched you so that you wouldn't fall face-first into the mud, I hope. I thought we were past that."

"What?" Zelda asked, not understanding what Lilith was saying. She then remembered that she'd risked falling on the ground mere minutes before and added, "No, I'm not. You took care of me for three days when I was lying in bed, knocked out by cramps. You're allowed to touch me, now." Lilith let out a snort. "Only when I give you permission," Zelda clarified, blushing.

"Oh, I respect that you're not a very touchy-feely person, Zelda. Don't worry." Lilith smiled, but soon stopped dead in her tracks, motioning at Zelda to crouch down. She looked around, wide-eyed. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Zelda asked. She couldn't hear anything other than the usual birds chirping in the background, along with the feeble sound of a small river flowing in the distance. She inspected her surroundings, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

"A car engine," said Lilith, who had suddenly gone very still. "Oh, shit! We're traveling too close to the main road. Look over there."

Lilith had lifted her hand, pointing at something right in front of them: it was only then that Zelda spotted the half-hidden trail a few feet away from where they stood, large enough to fit a small car. How had she not noticed it sooner? Tall trees and bushes were partially covering the path, but a disciplined eye would have seen it immediately. Zelda took her map out of her backpack, but the trail was apparently unmarked. She'd been adamant about not wanting to walk anywhere near man-made roads, out of fear of encountering desperate and aggressive strangers, but she hadn't even been smart enough to steal a more recent map, where all the new roadways and secondary paths would be listed as well.

"Let's get away from here," Zelda said, but it was too late: all of a sudden, she heard the loud noise Lilith was referring to and an old jeep made its appearance on the road, proceeding at an impressive speed.

"Too late," Lilith whispered, grabbing her wrist and throwing both Zelda and herself on the ground.

The soil was muddy, as it had rained lightly the night before, and Zelda, though far greater danger lay ahead of her, couldn't stop herself from thinking of all the repellent worms and insects she was probably crushing with her weight in that instant. Repressing her disgust, aware that she was focusing on the meaningless perils to forget about the bigger ones, she brought her mind back on track, observing the car as it came toward them. She wasn't sure if they were decently hidden, as most trees were barren and the local plants were looking far less luxuriant than she'd thought, and she was beginning to feel light-headed. In an attempt to steady herself, she grabbed Lilith's hand and clutched it, mostly because she wanted a physical reminder that the woman was still with her. Lilith squeezed back, but didn't take her eyes off the road.

She prayed that the people driving the jeep would keep their eyes on their route and carry on driving, but her God was evidently too busy to address her needs and the vehicle stopped in the middle of the trail, close to where she and Lilith were hiding. She couldn't see much from her position, but Lilith seemed to have a better view and she was watching things as they unfolded, attentive. Zelda had once again misjudged her companion: Lilith's abilities did not lie in mushroom identification, but she certainly was the most prepared out of the two of them when it came to potentially dangerous situations. Zelda, on the other hand, was having trouble controlling her breathing, her heartbeat already far too rapid for her to be able to do anything about it. She was sweating, too, which made her want to draw her hand away from Lilith's, ashamed, but her fingers weren't responding to her commands and she wasn't certain that that was what she wanted, anyway. Lilith, on her part, didn't seem to mind.

She then heard the distinctive sound of someone stepping on fallen leaves, walking toward them. "This is a waste of time," a masculine voice said, but it had come from further away. It must have belonged to the person driving the jeep, while another one had likely gotten out of it to explore the woods. "There's nothing out there."

"I thought I saw something," another deep voice replied, moving in their direction.

In a split second, Lilith grasped Zelda's arm again, forcing her to roll over and hide with her under the shadow of a large tree. Zelda was sure that the strangers must have noticed their movements, but the foliage was thicker in that area and it hid them well enough. After a few instants of silence, during which Zelda had begun to convince herself that the men had decided to leave, the one closer to them said, "Wait, there might be someone here. You got your gun?"

"I do, but be quick. We don't have all day," the driver said.

Zelda's throat tightened, panic seizing her. She almost let out an involuntary whimper, as her stupid brain often forced her to do in terrifying moments such as that one, but Lilith was faster and she covered her mouth with her hand, stifling the sound, but not pressing hard enough to hurt her. Zelda accepted her help, lying motionless against Lilith's body, which was pressed against the trunk of the tree. As her back pushed awkwardly against the woman's breasts, Zelda could feel Lilith's speeding pulse, mixed with the beating of her own fluttering heart. She felt the desire to run away, then, convinced that she was about to be killed by one of the aggressive militia groups she'd tried so hard to avoid, but Lilith's life was at stake, too, and she couldn't do anything that reckless. Instead, she stood there with the brunette, their bodies closer than they'd ever been, listening as the stranger approached.

The steps were getting nearer and nearer and Zelda could feel their vibration on the ground beneath her. The need to scream overcame her again, but she swallowed her fear, burying her face in the hollow of Lilith's neck. If they were about to be shot, she didn't want the last thing she saw before her death to be the face of her murderer. Lilith's hair smelled nice, even though it had been a while since the last time they'd both been able to shower, and she wished she could stay there forever, her face touching the other woman's soft skin, her eyes closed. Lilith had removed her hand from Zelda's mouth and she was reaching for something inside her backpack. Once Zelda realized that she was looking for her gun, she slowly took her own butcher's knife out of her bag, barely able to wrap her fingers around its handle. Lilith's clear intention not to be slaughtered without putting up a fight restored some of Zelda's strength: no matter how much her body was shaking, she was not going to die a coward.

Then, out of the blue, the steps ceased. "It must have been some kind of animal," the man said, walking back in the direction of the road. "I swear I thought I saw two figures right there," he added. Zelda would have bet anything that he was pointing at the place where she and Lilith had been lying down up until a few seconds before. Had it not been for Lilith's quick thinking, they would have been found.

"Look, I get it. I keep seeing the weirdest things and finding out that they weren't really there," the other survivor said, turning the jeep on. Its engine was rumbling, making an awful squeaking noise. "Must be the food we've been eating. And the lack of sleep, too. Causing all sorts of hallucinations and shit."

"Could be," the second man said, but seemed unconvinced. As swiftly as they had arrived, the two men got back into their car and drove away.

As Lilith breathed a sigh of relief, Zelda essentially collapsed into her arms, attempting to muffle the sound of her sobs in case the pair was still within hearing distance. "It's okay," Lilith said, massaging her back. She was trying her best to reassure her, but she sounded as distressed as Zelda herself. "That was a close call, but we're good. Everything's alright."

"I'm sorry," Zelda said, wiping her eyes. Lilith offered her a tissue, which she gratefully accepted. Her head on Lilith's shoulder, she was obviously invading the woman's personal space, but, considering that they'd both just had quite the experience, she hoped the brunette wouldn't protest. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything," Lilith said, putting her handgun back into her bag and smiling feebly at Zelda, who didn't understand how the woman could be so irritatingly humble all the time.

"You saved our lives. You saved _my_ life. For the second time, no less," Zelda rebuked, raising her tone. Couldn't Lilith see how indispensable she'd become to her? How she would have died twice by then, had she not come to her rescue? How she liked to tell herself that she was the one keeping them both alive, when, in reality, Lilith was doing all the hard work? Would it have been _so_ hard for that infuriating woman to accept her gratitude? Zelda Spellman wasn't a person who easily admitted her own weaknesses and she simply wanted Lilith to acknowledge her thankfulness, for Christ's sake!

"I'm a bit shaken too, Zelda. I need to get my head straight," Lilith said. Zelda regretted her outburst instantly. She wasn't the only one coming out of a near-death experience. She lifted herself from the mucky soil and helped Lilith get up as well, picking up their belongings. "I think we should look for the nearest hikers' cabin and spend the night there. It's unlikely that those guys will come back anytime soon. They've already patrolled the area, or so it seems."

"I agree. I'm too beat to keep walking," Zelda said, staring at her map. The nearest shelter was about two hours away from their current position and she was too agitated to camp under the stars that night. Unless she finally chose to take up on Lilith's offer to sleep in the same tent, of course. As a last resort, clearly.

"Wait." Lilith's voice interrupted her private reflections. Zelda's stomach dropped, fearing that the menacing duo had returned. Instead, Lilith signaled at her to be quiet, pointing at something under a pile of twigs and branches. "I can't believe this. I think we've got company."

"Oh, God," Zelda couldn't help but exclaim, clutching her chest. Two pairs of children's eyes were watching them from under the bundle of sticks and leaves: a young, trembling girl whose gaze was filled with dread and worry and another one who seemed ready to attack them both, if needed. "Oh," she repeated, staring at the second child, with curly blond hair and a fierce look on her face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this is the last update I'm posting before the year ends and then you will not hear from me until I have recovered from whatever is going to happen on the 31st. I'm just having so much fun with this story and I have the physical need to share a chapter immediately after writing it. That said, I did love writing this new part and I really hope you will enjoy it!

Out of all the different kinds of people Zelda could have imagined stumbling upon in the wilderness that day, two unaccompanied children were definitely at the bottom of her list. Her nerves slowly calming down, she took a moment to observe the young girls who were warily stepping out of the shadows: the taller one – a black girl with short, milky hair and a great amount of fear hidden behind her hazel eyes – was standing behind the shorter one, who didn't appear to be half as panicked as her friend. The other child's gaze was shifting quickly between Zelda and Lilith, possibly deciding whether the two women could be trusted or not. They had watched them as they were hiding from the armed men, which was likely why they'd chosen to show themselves, sensing that they weren't allied to the bad guys with guns and loud cars. Zelda understood their caution, as it was exactly how she'd acted during her first encounter with Lilith. Children were taught not to talk to strangers, after all, and it was always better to be safe than to be sorry.

"Hi," Lilith said, breaking the silence. She took a step forward, but the girls retreated. "It's okay. We have no intention to hurt you. My name is Lilith," she said, holding out her hand to introduce herself. The children, as one might have expected, didn't shake hands with her, but they appeared to be more relaxed. At least, one of them did. The shorter one was still on the defensive, her small fists clenched.

Zelda remained a few feet behind Lilith, observing the scene. Suddenly, the child with blond hair said, "I don't think we should trust you." It was both strange and sad to witness all that cautiousness and suspicion in such a tiny person. "You could be with them," she added, nodding toward the road. The other girl shook her head as well, hidden behind her friend.

"That's smart of you. You should be wary of strangers," Lilith agreed. Her tone was sweeter than usual, more placid. "But, if we really were friends with those men, why were we trying not to get caught by them? You saw us behind that tree, didn't you? I can swear to you that we have nothing to do with them and we aren't looking for any trouble. We only want to find a safe place where we can spend the night. Like you two, I assume."

"Yes," the second girl said. Her voice was rather shaky and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. "We got lost."

"That's not true, Pru!" the blonde one interrupted her, shooting her a warning glance. She looked back at Lilith and Zelda, wanting them to know that they were definitely  _ not _ lost, no matter what her friend might believe. "There's a trail right there. If we follow it, we'll be out of this forest in no time."

That wasn't such a good idea, Zelda thought. If they walked on the main road, their chances of running into those same men they'd barely avoided before were going to be much higher. What were two young girls doing in the middle of the woods, anyway? It would have made more sense if there had been an adult with them, but, judging from their shape and frightened, hungry eyes, no one had been there to help those children in quite some time. How had they even managed to survive for that long? Even she, a full-grown woman who had acquired a somewhat skilled traveling partner, had often felt hopeless and lost during her journey. She didn't want to think about how those kids must have been feeling in that instant, but it was hard not to, especially since the taller one was staring at her with silent tears running down her cheeks, her lower lip trembling.

She wished she could give them both a tight, potentially awkward hug, but she had minimal to no experience with children and she was certain that they would have attempted to run away if she and Lilith had made any kind of abrupt movement, in any case. "It's not a bad plan, but it's a risky one. Those strangers could come back," Lilith said, voicing Zelda's thoughts. "How did you even get here? Is there a town nearby?"

"We ran away," the first child confessed, not breaking eye contact. "There was another group of evil men in our city. They were breaking into houses and stealing everything. We were afraid that they would hurt us, so we decided to hide in the woods."

"I see," Lilith said, attempting to get more scraps of information. "You two are sisters, then?"

"We're friends," the crying child explained, drying her face with the sleeve of her winter coat. Zelda noticed that their clothes were rather filthy, covered in soil and leaves. "We used to go to the same school. One day, we woke up and everyone had disappeared. We were the only ones left. My name is Prudence."

"Pru! We said that we would use code names," the other girl reprimanded her. "They could be killers, for all we know. Do you want to be murdered and eaten for dinner by two old ladies?"

Zelda let out a laugh at that description of them. When the child looked at her in outrage, she realized her mistake and said, "Even if we  _ were _ cannibals, there wouldn't be much to eat, would there? You girls are stick-thin. Here, take some protein bars," she added, reaching for her bag.

"We don't want your food," the girl said, severe. "Let's go, Prudence."

Zelda was appalled by the child's behavior. Where were her manners? Had she been raised by wolves? "Fine. Good luck," she said, beginning to walk away.

"Are you insane?" Lilith stopped her, grabbing her arm. Lowering her voice so that the little ones wouldn't hear her, she whispered, "We can't just leave them here by themselves. They can't be older than ten! It's a miracle that they even made it this far."

"They clearly don't want our help, Lilith. We can't force them to come with us. We don't have enough tents and provisions, anyway."

It was harsh, but true: surviving in that world was hard enough without a couple of children in tow and letting Prudence and her pestiferous friend accompany them on their journey would have slowed them down considerably. Besides, they certainly weren't the only well-intentioned adults left alive and the girls were bound to meet someone else, sooner rather than later. Zelda had no intention of dragging two belligerent children by their scalps if they refused to accept their help, considering that they seemed to be doing fine on their own. Well, maybe not exceptionally fine, but they surely knew not to trust strangers, which was a start. It might have been selfish, but Zelda should think of her needs too, shouldn't she?

"Jesus, you're fucking heartless," Lilith exclaimed. Zelda searched for an affable smirk on her companion's face, but the woman wasn't fooling around. She tried to touch Lilith's forearm and ask her to control herself, but the woman pulled away from her, tensed. "What are you made of, Zelda Spellman, that lets you abandon two young kids in the woods without a second thought?"

"It's the most logical thing to do," she protested.

"So would be slaughtering me in the middle of the night and running away with my supplies, but I don't believe you ever considered doing that. Or so I hope." Lilith sucked in her cheeks. "Try to get your heart out of your head, for once," she said, turning her back on her to face the children, who had been not-so-discreetly attempting to eavesdrop on their conversation for its entire duration.

Zelda felt sick, then. Of course, Lilith was right. What had she been thinking? Leaving those innocent girls in the wilderness, with no one in the world to care for them? What kind of a monster would have done something like that? Well, she would have, or so it seemed. It wasn't like she was  _ really _ planning on washing her hands of them, obviously. Or was it? Zelda didn't even know what she wanted, at that point. Her brain had been set on survival mode for so long that she couldn't even tell the difference between right – taking the children along with them, keeping them well-fed and clothed – and wrong – leaving them there and pretending that that whole day had been nothing but a bad dream. She felt like crying, but she also wished she could slap herself across the face and reset her mind entirely. Where was the Zelda who prepared carafes of delicious lemonade for her friends' children in the summer and bought dozens of onesies as soon as she learned about an acquaintance's pregnancy? Gone, apparently, and a worse, meaner version of that person had replaced her. She rubbed her eyes, trying to keep the tears from spilling out.

"Now, where were we?" Lilith's voice was high again, friendly. "I know it's a hard decision to make, but I think it would be better if you came with us. We have food, for a start." Zelda saw Prudence's face lit up and she smiled, in spite of everything. "We can also protect you, in case those men ever decide to come back. And I have some pretty cool stories I could tell you before bed. I'm a great storyteller, in fact."

"What kind of stories?" the blonde girl asked, intrigued. "Adventure ones?"

"Sure! I'm good at telling those." Lilith smirked.

"With dragons? And witches?" the child inquired, furrowing her eyebrows in deep thinking.

"I like old fairy tales. My parents gave me a huge storybook for my birthday, but I had to leave it behind when we ran away. I like stories with pirates in them," Prudence intervened, her voice hiding a hint of sadness. "But those with dragons and witches are fun, too. I don't mind."

"Absolutely! Pirates, witches, fairies, talking animals, the whole bunch. I know a lot of them, don't worry." Lilith stretched out her hand again, winking. "Do we have a deal, then?"

"Give us a moment," the first child said, turning in Prudence's direction. Zelda observed them as they whispered secret things to each other, captivated by how Lilith had handled the situation. She'd never been able to talk to kids like that. Most of them didn't even seem to like her very much, as a matter of fact. "We're coming with you," she said, at last. "But you have to tell us those stories. And help us get more food."

"Please," Prudence added.

"Great!" Lilith said, smiling. "Our plan is to reach a cabin a few miles away from here, if you're okay with walking for a little longer. It should be cozy and warm. And if we have to sleep outside, my tent can fit all of us, so I can tell you the wildest fairy tales before you fall asleep." Lilith turned toward Zelda, who had said nothing throughout that whole exchange, as if under a spell. "Are you not going to tell them your name?"

"What? Oh, right. I'm Zelda. Nice to meet you," she said, clumsily. The girls stared at her as if they were waiting for her to add something. "I'm sorry about before," she continued, realizing that an apology was long overdue. She was the adult in that scenario, after all. "Just so that we're clear, I would have never abandoned you here. I was bluffing, that's all."

"Sure," the blonde one said, sarcastically.

Zelda was taken aback by the caustic remark. She could have handled things differently, evidently, and it would be a while before she could fully gain the kids' trust, but there truly was no need to act all snarky. "And what's your name, little lady?" she asked, once they'd all resumed walking in the direction of the log cabin.

"I'm not little! I'm almost nine," the child protested, frowning. Zelda noticed that she was carrying a pink backpack that was way too big for her small body, but she had no intention to offer her any help. Unless she specifically asked for it, of course. She'd had enough of her irreverent tone. "And my name is Sabrina."

Hearing that name, Zelda suddenly felt dizzy, a heavy feeling hitting her stomach. She knew it was the silliest theory she could have possibly come up with, but hadn't Edward and his wife moved south ten years back, shortly before they'd had Sabrina? Approximately in that area, too, according to the few details Hilda had shared with her during their conversations over the phone. "And what's your last name?" Zelda asked, uneasy.

Sabrina's eyes became narrow, as if she were trying to figure out why that nosy woman would ask her that. "It's White."

"Is it?" Zelda insisted. Lilith raised an eyebrow, shooting her a look that meant that she should simply drop the subject, but Zelda had to be sure. "What? I'm only asking because it sounds like she said the first surname that crossed her mind."

"And Zelda sounds like a name out of a dumb movie for snotty babies, but I didn't say that when you introduced yourself, since I'm not rude. Unlike you." Zelda's jaw almost hit the ground at that, as both Lilith and Prudence failed to keep in a burst of laughter. On second thought, Zelda was glad not to be related to that little demon. "Why do you care so much?"

The girl's attitude was unbelievably impolite, but she did have a point. The possibility of accidentally meeting Edward's child in the middle of nowhere was practically non-existent and she needed to nip that delusion right in the bud. Besides, this Sabrina looked nothing like Edward. Except for her eyes, maybe, which were dark and full of fight like her brother's had been, but the world was flooded with people with brown irises and a nasty attitude and she couldn't exactly go around believing that every insolent young woman who fit that description could be her niece. Related or not, she would be stuck caring for Sabrina and her friend anyway, so dwelling on that matter was entirely unnecessary. She'd lost her only chance at being an aunt the second she'd supported her parents' abominable views and she would never get it back, but she could still try to be a decent guardian to Sabrina and Prudence.

"I was just making conversation. Like well-mannered people do," she replied.

"That's quite enough, don't you think?" Lilith said, linking arms with her as the girls kept marching behind them. Zelda opened her mouth to protest, not actually making any effort to pull away, but Lilith was quicker and added, "Let's not make this any more difficult than it has to be. Do you really want to pick a fight with an eight-year-old?"

Zelda huffed, but she knew that Lilith was right. She had to try to get on Sabrina's good side. "I hope you meant it when you said that you would let them sleep in your tent, because I certainly won't let them get anywhere near mine. Not until they have cleaned themselves up, at least."

"Oh, you're such a mother hen," Lilith replied, her lips quirked upwards. Zelda took it as a sign that the woman had forgiven her for her earlier selfishness, even if she wasn't convinced that she deserved it. "Don't worry, I always keep my promises. I do believe we should give them a bath as soon as possible, however. They smell a bit feral, at present."

Zelda snickered. "They do," she confirmed. She was secretly liking that peculiar walk through the forest, arm-in-arm with Lilith, as Sabrina and Prudence swiftly followed them, chatting between themselves. "I imagine that we should ask them about their families, eventually. It's more than possible that they could have some surviving relatives."

"We should probably wait and see if they choose to open up to us, first. It could be a difficult topic to tackle."

"I suppose you're right." Zelda had had months to accept the fact that Faustus and the rest of her family had vanished, but she hadn't considered the fact that the kids might not have understood the full extent of what had been going on. "You're good with children," she then pointed out, genuinely admiring the ability Lilith had shown while dealing with the girls. Had she been alone, she highly doubted that she would have acted with the same tactfulness and tolerance.

"Thank you," Lilith replied. She looked as if she were about to speak again, but didn't. After a couple of seconds, she changed her mind. "A girlfriend of mine had a newborn baby when we started dating," she said. "We broke up when he was only three, but kids are all the same. Once you learn how to handle one, you pretty much know how to care for them all."

"You were with a woman?" Zelda asked. She hated how surprised she'd sounded and she wished she could take her question back. Was that why Lilith had reacted so negatively when she'd told her about Edward? In truth, any rational human being would have judged her for her actions, but Lilith might have had an additional motive.

"I was. Multiple ones, if you want me to be honest. Does that bother you?"

"No!" Zelda all but yelled, gripping Lilith's hand. Immediately letting go of it, not wanting her behavior to appear inappropriate, she added, "I think that's great. Well, I think it's fine. Normal. I don't care, really. I'm neutral toward that." What had gotten into her? Why couldn't she just shut her damned mouth up?

"God, you're so fucking weird." Lilith clicked her tongue, smiling. The children, who had once again been eavesdropping on what the adults had been saying, snickered at the profanity. Zelda chose to remain silent, not wanting to embarrass herself further. She spent the rest of the journey walking next to Lilith, their arms linked, telling herself that it was only because she'd risked falling on the ground way too many times already and the brunette wanted to prevent that from happening again, but knowing that there was something else to it, too. She wasn't foolish enough not to realize that there was an ache inside her that desperately wanted to come out, but she wasn't sure that she wanted it to. For the time being, linking arms would do.


	8. Chapter 8

Zelda was aware that taking two young girls on a journey like the one she and Lilith had embarked on would be a challenge, but she'd expected them to be able to travel without complaining for a couple of hours, minimum. Even Lilith knew when to shut her mouth and let her enjoy a few moments of quiet, which, taking into account how much that woman loved to bother her for no reason, was quite the achievement. Children, however, couldn't be silenced with pursed lips and a disappointed gaze – at least, Sabrina certainly couldn't be – and asking them not to talk for a while wouldn't exactly have helped Zelda win their affection. So, there she was, walking in the middle of the woods, having to hear two petulant kids complain about their aching feet and empty tummies, despite all the protein bars and snacks they'd already eaten. Lilith was trying to be mindful of their needs, assuring them that they'd reach the hikers' cabin in no time, but, of course, once they all spotted another cottage halfway through their route, it didn't take much convincing to get Zelda to agree to spend the night there.

Lilith had needed to break into the cottage through a window, while Zelda had watched her and prayed that she wouldn't accidentally cut herself and risk catching an awful infection. The brunette had repeatedly assured her that she'd already done that plenty of times before and Zelda had hoped that she'd been referring to their current post-apocalyptic reality and not to her previous life. She'd never asked Lilith what she used to do for a living, but she could almost picture her as a burglar. Thief or not, Lilith managed to get into the house and opened the door for them shortly after, moving an old dresser in front of the broken window so that the chilly evening air wouldn't get in. Zelda had been so captivated by the sight of Lilith pushing the piece of furniture, the silhouette of her toned arms clearly visible under her thermal shirt, that she'd forgotten to ask her if she needed any help. Not that she would have ever accepted it, considering how much the woman liked to show off.

"Now that we're all settled in, I believe it's time for the two of you to take a quick bath," Lilith said, wiping off a layer of sweat from her forehead. "Zelda and I use wet wipes to clean ourselves, but you're both slimy as snails and I fear that we will have to do this the hard way."

"The hard way?" Prudence exclaimed, opening her eyes widely.

"Don't listen to her," Zelda said, sighing. Lilith feigned offense, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips. "She means that you will have to take a cold shower using bottled water. It's not pleasant, but it'll make you smell like humans again."

"I'm not taking a cold shower," Sabrina protested.

"And I don't want to be around two stinking little girls for the rest of this trip," Zelda said, crossing her arms. Lilith shot her a scolding glance. Huffing again, she added, "I imagine we'll have to find a compromise, then. There's a camping stove right over there and I could use it to warm up some water, but it won't be piping hot. We have to save some fuel for our dinner. Unless you want to eat cold peas and expired crackers, that is."

"No way!" Prudence interrupted her, elbowing her friend. Sabrina was too busy staring at Zelda with what was possibly the meanest expression she could conjure to notice Prudence's admonishment. "Cold water is fine. Thank you."

"I guess," Sabrina mumbled, scrunching up her nose.

"Great," Lilith said, cocking her head in Zelda's direction. Zelda interpreted the gesture as the woman's silent way of thanking her for knowing when to pick her battles. "I'd be happy to help you, if you'll let me. I want to make sure that you're all clean and perfumed and that you have no strange wounds or bug bites anywhere." The children looked at each other and then nodded. "We have a plan, then. Zelda, could you rummage through the closets a bit and see if you can find some towels we could use? I'll start warming up the water."

"Sure," Zelda said, headed toward the master bedroom.

Walking through the door, it dawned on her that the cottage only had two rooms: the smaller one had likely been the children's bedroom, equipped with a bunk bed and soft carpets that were soaked with dust, while the other one was mostly occupied by a large bed and a chest of drawers. She figured that the girls would both sleep in the queen-sized bed, until Sabrina, who should have been washing up instead of snooping around the cabin, said, "Look, Pru! There's a bunk bed! I call dibs on the upper one."

"Okay," Prudence replied. Her voice was coming from the bathroom, which meant that at least one of the two tiny beasts was preparing herself to get cleaned up. "I'm scared of heights, anyway."

"This is so cool!" Zelda heard Sabrina say. Her words were followed by hurried footsteps, indicating that she'd finally joined Lilith and Prudence in the small washroom.

That new arrangement certainly changed things. Zelda's cheeks flared up at the thought of sleeping next to Lilith. It was only due to the fact that she had never particularly enjoyed sleeping next to another person, clearly, and the idea of sharing a bed with a stranger embarrassed her. Even during her on-and-off relationship with Faustus, during those stretches of time when he was living with her, she would always ask him to move to the guestroom after they had made love – which wasn't often – or had had yet another fight – which happened way more frequently. He rarely objected and Zelda told herself that it was because he also enjoyed his privacy, but, deep inside her heart, she knew that neither one of them had ever craved sleeping next to the other very much. On some rare occasions, she'd wished that he would protest more vehemently and explain to her just how much he needed to feel the presence of her body next to his, but the complaints never came. It didn't matter, as Zelda was an adult woman, after all, and she was too old to beg for crumbs of intimacy. Yet, thinking of Lilith falling asleep in the same bed as her made her feel _something_. She wasn't sure if it was a good or a bad feeling, but it was there and she didn't know how to make it go away. She wasn't even certain that she wanted it to.

"The water is _freezing_ cold, Lilith! Please, make it stop!" Sabrina's theatrical screeches brought her back to reality.

"Only a few more minutes," Lilith replied. From the tone of her voice, Zelda could tell that she was amused by the girl's antics. "With all your dramatics, you could give Zelda a run for her money. Come on, let me wash your hair and we'll be done in no time."

Taking in a deep breath, Zelda focused on her task again, realizing that she'd been lost in her considerations for several minutes. It was getting late and she had so much to do, still. She couldn't afford to get distracted by such foolish ideas. She got the towels Lilith had asked for and found some child-sized clothes in the other bedroom: the shirts would fit Sabrina and Prudence just fine, but the pants were definitely too long for them. She left the towels neatly organized in a pile outside the bathroom and looked around for a sewing kit of sorts, but soon gave up and grabbed a pair of scissors and some duct tape, beginning to cut off the hem of a pair of jeans. She didn't know how tall the kids actually were, so she would have to eyeball it. She'd been a rather skilled seamstress before the mass disappearance – mostly out of habit, as she was used to mending Faustus' old socks and shirts, but she also liked to sew her own clothes, as her style had gotten more and more vintage over the years and it was hard for her to find dresses she truly liked at her local clothing shop.

It wasn't something worth crying over, but a knot formed in Zelda's throat when she wondered when she'd be able to work her magic with needle and thread again. She could likely resume her hobby after reaching Hilda's house, but who would see her wearing her lovingly hand-crafted clothes? Not counting her sister, she was going to spend the rest of her life in semi-isolation, tending to pigs and all the other disgusting animals Hilda raised. Unless Lilith decided to settle somewhere close to the farm, which was probably what she was going to do, wasn't it? By the looks of it, the brunette intended to keep Sabrina and Prudence with her – even if Zelda knew that Hilda would have loved to have the girls running around the house – and children needed stability, so Lilith would have to settle down, eventually. As she'd told her during their first meeting, there would be many empty cabins near her sister's farm and she could occupy one of them. Or not, if she preferred to move somewhere else. At the end of the day, she was free to do whatever she wanted and she was under no obligation to take Zelda's selfish wishes into account.

Zelda shook her head, hating the dread that wrapped itself around her heart whenever she thought of the future. Instead, she redirected her attention to the muffled sounds coming from the bathroom, noticing that Lilith and the girls seemed to be in the middle of a passionate discussion. "I don't like her. She's mean," Sabrina said, her tone whiny.

"I don't think she wanted us to come with you," Prudence added, half-whispering. "If you hadn't stopped her, she would have walked away from us."

Zelda's stomach sank like a stone when she realized that they were talking about her. Her eyes started to well up again and she cursed herself and her appalling inability to put her emotional constipation aside and simply be _nice_ , for once. They were only kids, for pity's sake! They had lost their parents and families in one of the most confusing and horrific ways imaginable and she'd shown them nothing but her insufferable iciness in a time when all they had needed was someone who would listen to them. No wonder they seemed to prefer Lilith over her: Lilith, who had offered to help them wash up, even if they had smelled like little forest animals; who had bribed them with the promise of warm food, unconditioned protection, and wonderful stories. What had Zelda done for them, exactly, besides showing them that she would have abandoned them in the woods without thinking about it twice? Nothing, apart from cutting up some clothes and doing a terrible job at it.

Bitterness rising in her throat, she stepped away from the dining table, attempting to collect herself. As she was massaging her temples, she could still hear Lilith speaking in the background, though she had lowered her voice. "She's a little cold, but you only need to give her some time to adjust," the woman explained. "Everyone reacts differently in difficult situations. She was a bit confused when we first met you, but she will warm up to you." Hearing that, Zelda could no longer stop the tears from streaming down her face and she covered her mouth, repressing a loud sob. Why was Lilith trying to defend her? "She didn't like me that much, at first, but now she _loves_ me."

"She does?" Sabrina asked, surprised. Zelda regained her composure at once, shocked by what Lilith had just told the girls. She surely did not _love_ her! She'd barely even started to like her, in all honesty. Plus, they'd only known each other for a few weeks. Not that that detail mattered in any way, of course, since Zelda did _not_ have feelings for that woman. Nor did she like women in general, for that matter. What in God's name was Lilith blabbering about?

She dried her tears, preparing herself to storm into the washroom and put an end to that idiotic conversation, when Lilith let out a laugh and said, "Well, she might not love me, if we're talking technicalities, but she does laugh at my jokes. Even when she's pretending that they're not funny." She paused, but then added, "And that's a good start, I reckon."

"I mean, that's because they're really good jokes," Prudence commented.

"They certainly are. Thank you," Lilith said. "My point is that, while she might be all tough on the outside, there's some good in her, too." Lilith's voice was but a murmur and Zelda struggled to hear her next words. "She'll show you her gentle side, sooner or later, but you have to stop acting all snippy and sarcastic. I don't want you to hurt her feelings, even if you don't mean to. Understood?"

"Alright. I'll try my best," Sabrina said, following a small pause. "Now, will you tell me a joke with a curse word in it? I bet you know thousands of them."

"Yes, please!" Prudence said, cheerfully supporting her friend's request.

"Absolutely not," Lilith replied, laughing. "Finish drying yourselves up and I'll see if I can find something else you can wear. Zelda and I will start cooking dinner soon."

Zelda heard them as they left the bathroom, her back turned on the trio. She was still figuring out how to shorten the pants properly, but, to be fair, she hadn't been paying much attention to her project, more interested in what Lilith had had to say about her. "Are you alright?" Lilith whispered, gently squeezing her shoulder as she walked past her. Was she trying to find out if Zelda had listened to what she'd told the girls? No, Lilith wasn't like that. If she'd wanted to know, she would have openly asked her, because she was always annoyingly straightforward and impossibly kind. Subterfuge was more of Zelda's specialty.

"A tad of melancholy," Zelda replied, aware that it was rather evident that she'd been crying. "That's all."

Lilith stared at her, furrowing her eyebrows. "I'd offer to give you a hug, but I don't want to get punched square in the face. I'd prefer to keep my teeth for as long as possible and I know that you're not the hugging type." She wasn't, but having Lilith's arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders suddenly did not sound too unpleasant. "Do you want to talk about it? Either now or when Sabrina and Prudence are asleep. I wouldn't mind having a grown-up conversation, for a change."

"No," Zelda said, sniffling. "It's nothing. We should start cooking. It could take a while."

Lilith seemed apprehensive, but she didn't press the issue. The dreadful pain under her breastbone kept haunting Zelda for the rest of the night and she couldn't tell if it was a result of her guilt or her loneliness. Lilith prepared some sauce-less pasta, which Sabrina and Prudence inhaled as soon as the food touched their plates. Zelda ate too, in spite of her low mood: they'd had a long day and being well-fed, in a world like that one, was essential. Lilith kept casting furtive glances toward her throughout the entire dinner, but didn't actually speak to her: she was too occupied entertaining Sabrina and Prudence, who, despite being visibly tired, wouldn't stop asking for more stories and anecdotes about Lilith's life. Zelda doubted all of them could be true, but she was glad of the woman's talkativeness, for once. The silence would have been unbearable.

Once they were all done, Prudence helped Zelda clear the table and nodded politely when she thanked her, running into the children's bedroom to be reunited with Sabrina, who was getting ready for bed. Zelda wanted the girl's helpfulness to indicate that she didn't fully hate her, like Sabrina seemed to. At that moment, Lilith got out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a robe that looked too much like a provocative negligee. One that left little to the imagination, too. "Aren't you cold?" Zelda said, desperately praying that her eyes wouldn't fall on the curve of the woman's breasts. In her defense, it was almost like Lilith wanted her to glance her way.

"We lit the fireplace, Zelda. I'm surprised that you're not sweating like a racehorse, wearing that pullover." Oh, Zelda was definitely feeling rather sweaty, but it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. "I found this in one of the closets," she added, pointing at her dressing gown. "There's a leopard-printed one laid out on the bed, if you want it. It's not really my style, but I thought it would suit you." She clicked her tongue, smirking.

Zelda, who was certain that she was, by then, dangerously close to spontaneously combusting, barely managed to tilt her head and whisper a quick word of thanks, disappearing into the master bedroom. Sure enough, the robe Lilith had mentioned was spread out on the bed, as if it were waiting specifically for her. It wasn't as short or as immodest as Lilith's, but the idea that the brunette had seen it and thought of her made her stomach flutter. She was reminded of scenes from movies where the male protagonist would buy his girlfriend something sweet for their anniversary – flowers, perhaps, or even jewelry – and leave it on the bedside table for her to find when she woke up. She had to resort to fictional scenarios to describe that sensation, as Faustus had never treated her with such thoughtfulness. She knew that Lilith's gesture could hide certain implications, but, right then, she did not care. Slipping out of her clothes, she put the nightgown on and lay down on the bed, waiting.

Waiting for what, though? For whom? Neither one of them had mentioned sleeping arrangements, but Zelda had assumed that Lilith would camp out on the couch, as the kids had chosen to occupy the bunk bed. It wouldn't be the first time that the woman had accepted to sleep a little less comfortably so that Zelda could use the main bedroom. Sitting up, she listened to the sound of Sabrina and Prudence laughing their heads off in the adjacent room. She caught Lilith's voice too, giddy. She couldn't make out what the other woman was telling them, but she assumed it must have been one of her famous bedtime stories. She would be lying to herself if she pretended that she wasn't glad that the bedtime routine had fallen on Lilith's shoulders, but, with her companion otherwise engaged, she was starting to feel, for the first time in weeks, somewhat bored.

Looking around, unsure what to do to occupy the time, she spotted a full-length mirror she hadn't noticed before, standing in a corner. Staring at her own reflection, she began to analyze the changes her body had had to undergo over the previous months: though she'd hoped that her face and figure would be thinner after all those days spent in the wilderness, she was quite happy to see that her cheeks hadn't lost their childlike roundness, which made her look several years younger than she actually was. She wondered what Lilith would have said, had she asked her how old she thought she was. Lilith herself must have been in her late forties, but she appeared to be far more youthful and athletic than Zelda. Asking herself if she was, perhaps, envious of Lilith's well-defined arms and lean legs, she realized that she was, in fact, rather happy with her own figure. If not jealousy, what was, then, the cause of the ache that had blossomed in her belly earlier, when she'd caught a glimpse of Lilith's breasts under her nightrobe?

Suddenly, Zelda Spellman started to experience a sensation long-forgotten: a wave of warmness rushed through her lower body, spreading through her as if her limbs and core had been set on fire. Instinctively clutching her chest, Zelda looked back into the mirror in front of her and saw her own reflection staring at her with wide eyes, as if frightened by her own desire. She tried to close them, willing for the rush of heat to pass, but she had no such luck. Zelda had felt deep arousal a few times in her life, but never like that. Never so suddenly. Never when she'd been thinking about another woman's body up until mere minutes before. Then, an unspeakable, highly inappropriate thought flashed across her mind: she was all alone in that room, wasn't she? Lilith was busy putting the girls to sleep and Zelda had never been particularly loud in bed, anyway. Well, not with Faustus, at least, but she was positive that it wouldn't be much different if she took care of things herself. She'd rarely done that before, as her Christian upbringing had taught her that certain acts were sinful, but desperate times called for desperate measures, didn't they?

Turning off her portable lamp, she slipped under the covers, wearing nothing but the robe Lilith had picked for her. Her fingers finding their way beneath the hem of her nightgown, she slid one hand across her breasts, thinking of people and scenarios that could increase her growing titillation, but, every time she attempted to picture someone or something, Lilith's olive skin, scarcely covered by the woman's black negligee, appeared right before her, as vividly as if she were next to her in that instant. In the following days, she would often repeat to herself that she'd done her best to imagine a different person, another situation; but, if she were to be completely honest, she hadn't exactly tried that hard at all. She blamed the circumstances she'd found herself in, of course: with no men around and a woman who constantly made ambiguous remarks when talking to her, as if she were always subtly flirting with her, it was hard to resist such temptations. She would never tell Lilith about it, naturally, even if she was almost convinced that the woman wouldn't have minded. Above all, only God could judge her, and her God hadn't been answering her prayers in far too long.

Forgetting about the outside world entirely, Zelda slid two fingers inside herself, seeking the famous G-spot that sexually liberated women talked about in those silly novels the younger members of her monthly book club would always suggest. Realizing, then, that penetration was not necessary if she didn't have a dull, apathetic man to please and half-wondering what the feminist community would have thought of her sudden revelation, she withdrew her hand, running it over her clit instead. She started to rub it lightly, enjoying the ardent sensation that was growing in the depths of her belly, the image of Lilith's freckled breasts burned into her mind. Right when she was about to apply more pressure to reach her peak, a familiar voice came from the other side of the door, causing her to jump so high that she nearly fell off the bed. "Zelda, it's me! Can I come in? Are you decent?"

"One second," Zelda said, out of breath. Frantically, she turned her lamp on again and attempted to get rid of the wetness between her legs with a small towel, obtaining less-than-ideal results. Throwing the piece of cloth under the bed, as if she were an awkward teenager who had just been caught masturbating by her own horrified mother, she checked her reflection on the mirror and saw that her nightdress had ridden up over her hips, leaving her half-naked. Fixing her robe and moving her underwear back into place, she finally told Lilith that she could come in.

"What took you so long? Actually, I don't want to know." Zelda knew that Lilith had only been joking, but she felt ashamed, as if her secret were written plainly across her forehead.

"I was getting dressed," Zelda lied, her face flushed. "Thank you for the nightgown. It's very comfortable."

"I'm glad you like it." Lilith appeared as if she were on the verge of adding something, but remained silent.

Zelda couldn't stand to look at her one moment longer. Not while she was still wearing _that_. "Do you want to sleep in here, tonight?" She had blurted out the words before her brain had fully formed them. It was unquestionably an indecent proposal, especially after what she'd just done, but it didn't feel right to force Lilith to spend an uncomfortable night on the couch. Plus, she knew well that using the woman's figure as part of her own personal fantasy had been a nasty move on her part and she was beginning to feel guilty.

Lilith smiled. "I was about to ask you that, in fact. The sofa is old and crumpled and I would love to rest on a soft mattress, after the day we've both had."

"I don't mind," Zelda replied, pulling the covers up to her shoulders, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. She didn't want to risk accidentally taking a peek at Lilith's body again. She wasn't sure if she could handle that.

"Good. I promise you that I'll sleep as far away from you as possible," Lilith joked. Zelda tensed up when she thought of the possibility of their bodies getting progressively closer during the night, but faked a grateful smile. "Goodnight, Zelda," Lilith added, lying down on the other side of the bed.

"Goodnight," Zelda repeated, her heartbeat racing.

Instead of dozing off straightaway as Lilith did, Zelda remained awake for two or three more hours, unable to peacefully shut her eyes and slip into unconsciousness. Initially, she believed it was because she wanted Lilith to fall asleep first, afraid that the other woman would hear her snore or talk in her sleep if she'd drifted off before her. Once Lilith's breathing became deeper, signaling that she'd fallen right into the arms of Morpheus, and Zelda still couldn't bring herself to turn off her mind and simply sleep, she realized that the natural embarrassment of sharing a bed with another person for the first time wasn't the real problem at all.

The problem, in truth, was that Zelda Spellman was starting to feel things she'd never experienced before and she was positively terrified by them. As her vision finally blurred, it occurred to her that the aspect that scared her the most wasn't the risk of a wrathful God casting her into Hell, but the possibility that Lilith – so teasing, so easygoing, so diametrically opposite to her in every single way – might not find her lovable, or even interesting. One lone tear fell on her pillow as she sunk into sleep, at last. Though she couldn't remember her dreams that well the next morning when she opened her eyes and saw that Lilith had already gotten up, she could distinctly recall flashes of freckled skin, chestnut hair, round breasts, and a black satin negligee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I simply had to write an entire chapter dedicated to Zelda being sad and unsuccessfully attempting to jerk off. I'm sure a lot of us can relate, given how CAOS ended. I hope you enjoyed this new part!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in one afternoon and didn't check for mistakes before sharing it, but I'm still going to play the non-native English-speaker card if you do find any. I also wanted to thank all the kind people who have left kudos and lovely comments on this work over the past few weeks! I really can't thank you enough for your support. I hope you will enjoy this new chapter!

"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that Lilith wants us to get some thick wire. She said she's tired of breaking windows and she wants to learn how to pick locks," Sabrina said, strolling beside Zelda as they walked through the half-ransacked grocery store. The empty aisles looked rather spine-chilling at that time in the evening and the child, who had a tendency to wander off whenever she was left to Zelda's care, seemed too spooked to leave her side. "Do you think we could find some in here?"

"I think so," Zelda replied. "I don't get why she didn't ask me directly, though."

Sabrina gave a little shrug, unwrapping a lollipop. Those industrial candies were so full of sugar that Zelda doubted they could ever expire, so she let the girl enjoy it. There were so few sweet things left in that world, after all. "She probably didn't trust you enough. You're a bit old, so your memory isn't great."

"Thank you for that." Zelda rolled her eyes. She was likely the same age as Lilith, if not younger, but she didn't expect Sabrina to understand the difference between a middle-aged woman like herself and an octogenarian living in a nursing home. To kids, everyone above the age of twenty was ancient. "I bet she assumed I wouldn't get it for her. Which is fair, since I find the idea of picking locks absolutely barbaric."

"Maybe she's worried that she might cut herself and die," Sabrina commented, morbid. "Then Prudence and I would be stuck with you."

"Would that be so bad?"

Sabrina winced, then turned in Zelda's direction and faked a smile, holding her lollipop in her right cheek as if she were an overgrown hamster. "Not at all," she lied.

Zelda let out a laugh. Sabrina had apparently taken Lilith's advice to heart and she was trying her best to hide her slight dislike of her. Despite the terrible results, Zelda appreciated the kid's efforts. Prudence, at least, had somehow started to grow fond of her: one morning, after Zelda had walked in on the young girl softly weeping to herself, she'd offered her to do some activities together, hoping to silence her gloomy thoughts. In hindsight, she should have asked her if there was anything she wanted to talk about, but she'd never been the best one to give advice on how to fight off one's loneliness. Besides, temporarily distracting her had worked out well: as Lilith and Sabrina still slept in their warm beds, Zelda and Prudence had quietly begun to play dress-up, haphazardly putting make-up on each other's faces and bursting into laughter when Zelda, wearing heels that were far too high for her, had fallen right on her buttocks. The fall had hurt quite a bit, but she'd acted like it hadn't, amazed by how happy hearing Prudence laugh for the very first time had made her feel.

Bonding with Sabrina was a whole different story. The girl had taken a clear liking to Lilith – as one might have expected, as the two of them practically shared the same personality – and Zelda wondered if that was how mothers felt when their kids clearly preferred their spouses to them. Not that she thought of her and Lilith as a couple, or of Prudence and Sabrina as their children, but that was, undoubtedly, the closest she had ever gotten – and would ever get – to something remarkably similar to parenthood and she couldn't stop her mind from racing back to her own childhood and thinking about her mother. How many times had she tried and failed to enter Zelda's own private world? How often had she asked herself if her daughter truly liked her? She wished she'd asked her those questions before she'd passed away, but her mother had been dead for years and, truth be told, she had never been that great of a parent. Maybe Zelda actually preferred having to figure out certain aspects of that confusing arrangement on her own.

"Are you and Lilith in love?" Sabrina asked, loudly biting into her lollipop.

"What?" Zelda exclaimed, her heart skipping a beat. Out of all the odd and uncomfortable questions she'd believed Sabrina capable of asking, that one was certainly unexpected. "Why would you ever ask me that? Did Lilith say something? You shouldn't trust everything that comes out of her mouth." She remembered what Lilith had told the girls while she was helping them wash up on their first day together – that ridiculous remark on how she allegedly _loved_ her – and assumed that Sabrina had misinterpreted that comment.

"No real reason. Prudence asked me that and I got curious." Sabrina was barely paying attention to that chat, too busy sneaking bags of sweets into her pink backpack. "Maybe it's the way she looks at you."

"And how does she look at me, exactly?" Zelda told herself she didn't care about the girls' childish gossip, but her throat felt dry. She took a sip out of her water bottle, but couldn't swallow much of it, as if something were blocking the way.

"Like you're interesting, I guess. Like you aren't mean and kind of weird." Sabrina stopped talking, turning her face toward Zelda and narrowing her eyes. "I didn't mean it in a rude way. Don't tell Lilith that I said that, please. I didn't want to offend you."

"Don't worry. I won't." Sabrina had unquestionably insulted her and she knew that the girl felt no actual remorse, but there was no way she was ever going to share the contents of that conversation with Lilith. Having to discuss that matter with Sabrina was upsetting enough already. "There's nothing between me and Lilith," she proclaimed. It was the truth, but why was her heart feeling a little sore? "Any other intensely personal inquiries?"

"Not really. I'm good," Sabrina said, opening another candy bag.

"Don't eat too many of those. You don't want to get any cavities, do you?" Zelda said, reaching into the bag and popping two gummy bears into her mouth. She hadn't realized how much she had missed the taste of sugary junk food until then. "We would have to take all your rotting teeth out and there's no local anesthesia in this world."

Sabrina gasped. "I'll take some home to Lilith and Prudence," she said, as Zelda grabbed another handful of them. "Leave some for them too, Zelda!" she protested, pronouncing the woman's name with unexpected severity and withdrawing the box out of her reach. Zelda snorted, but the conversation she and Sabrina had just had kept replaying in her mind and she couldn't shake off a certain sensation of discomfort, as if the matter hadn't been fully settled. As if she hadn't been completely truthful.

They left the supermarket soon after, having stolen all the food that was still edible. Zelda was proceeding a few feet ahead of Sabrina, looking around to make sure that they were the only people out there. They'd reached that village a few hours before, exhausted and drenched in sweat after having half-run through the woods for a good quarter of an hour: both Sabrina and Lilith had heard strange rustling noises and Zelda, though she was certain that it must have been a wild animal of sorts, had agreed to speed up their pace. Finally arriving in the town, they'd broken into an ancient apartment building near the edge of the forest, promptly ignoring Sabrina's request to spend the night inside the local run-down McDonald's. After eating an early dinner at five in the afternoon, Sabrina had agreed to accompany Zelda on an expedition to the abandoned grocery store – or, better, Zelda had accepted to bring the tiny imp with her – and they'd reluctantly parted from Lilith and Prudence. Zelda had been wary about leaving them alone in the apartment, but the brunette had rightfully reminded her that she should have been more worried about having to look after Sabrina all by herself, which had been a fair observation.

Zelda checked her wristwatch: they'd been gone for less than two hours, but the sky was already dark and they could hardly see where they were going. She held up her solar-powered flashlight, lighting the way. Winter was approaching and the temperature was going to drop below zero overnight soon, which was bad news: sleeping inside empty houses made them more vulnerable, but she couldn't imagine forcing the children to camp outside in the middle of December. Was it actually December, though? Lilith kept a diary where she meticulously registered the passing of time, but Zelda had stopped caring about what day it was two weeks into that catastrophe. Was there even a point in knowing whether it was a Monday or a Tuesday? Did that still matter, considering that civilization as they knew it had crumbled months before? She couldn't understand Lilith's need to write all of that down, but she figured it was just another way to keep one's mind occupied and avoid slipping into insanity.

Lost in her considerations, she hadn't realized that they'd arrived at their destination. Standing outside the door of the apartment they'd broken into, she lifted her hand to knock on it and let its two occupants know that they were back, but paused, midair, hearing sounds coming from inside the flat. "Is that... Is that music?" she asked, surprised.

"I think so," Sabrina said, nearly throwing herself against the door to listen to the upbeat tune. "It's a piano! And a guitar!" she yelled, storming into the foyer and running straight toward the living room.

Zelda remained right by the entrance, as if paralyzed. Stepping inside, slowly, she saw that Lilith and Prudence had lit candles all over the place – a terrible fire hazard, surely, but they made the flat look beautiful and the atmosphere reminded her of those few times her town had experienced major electrical breakouts and she'd been forced to use half-melted candles to illuminate her house. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to pretend that the electricity had only been interrupted briefly and that it was bound to come back, eventually. She breathed in deeply, taking in all the different smells, from lavender to cinnamon, focusing on the sour scent of lemon that was permeating the hallway.

She stepped into the kitchen to drop off their new provisions and then followed the melody that was coming from the sitting room. She tried to recall the last time she'd listened to any kind of music, even distractedly, but couldn't. Oh, she had loved music so deeply: classical music, especially, but she'd also been a fan of musical theatre and old Broadway productions and had gone to the occasional rock concert in her younger years. The radio was constantly on when she was alone at home and strangers had caught her singing to herself way too many times, yet she couldn't remember what the last song she'd ever listened to had been. Music had been a constant in her life since childhood, so how could she have expected that it would be taken away from her so abruptly? Entering the living room, she saw that Lilith was sitting in front of a small piano, as Prudence happily strummed a guitar far too large for her little body. They were both playing beautifully, though Zelda couldn't recognize the tune.

"This is lovely," Zelda said, feeling slightly out of breath. Sabrina was moving around, waving her arms in a bizarre dance and occasionally attempting to grab Prudence's guitar. "I didn't think you two knew how to play. Quite well, I must say."

"Thank you," Lilith said, getting up. She gestured at Prudence to take her seat and the girl gave her own instrument to Sabrina – who began to pluck its chords with a lot less grace than her friend – and started playing the piano. "Our Prudence is very talented. She can also play the flute, but we only found an untuned guitar and that old keyboard. The previous owners of this house had a love for music and candles, it seems." She picked up two champagne glasses from a short coffee table, filled with bubbly liquid.

"Is that white wine?" Zelda inquired. "Were you drinking _that_ with Prudence?"

"Of course, Zelda. Giving alcoholic beverages to minors under my care is one of my favorite pastimes, in fact. Thank you, as always, for your endless faith in my ability to make rational decisions," the woman mocked her, offering her one of the two glasses. "You're unbelievable. This is for you."

"Oh," Zelda exclaimed, accepting the wineglass. It had been a while since the last time she'd had a sip of wine and she found herself craving its taste. She downed it without a second thought, aware that drinks like that one were meant to be sipped and that her posh friends would have told her off for committing such a heinous crime, but sure that Lilith wasn't going to judge her for that. She sat on the couch, enjoying the warmth that the wine had provided, her gaze shifting between Sabrina and Prudence. Lilith was leaning against the wall and Zelda, for some strange reason, didn't feel like meeting her eye.

Suddenly, Lilith moved toward her, holding out her hand. "Care to dance?"

"Don't be silly," Zelda whispered, looking away.

"No, this can't be," Lilith dramatically clutched her chest, feigning surprise. "Are you telling me that the unfailing Zelda Spellman has two left feet? Poor dear. In that case, remain seated, please. I wouldn't want to embarrass you."

"Embarrass _me_?" Zelda played along, lifting herself up from the sofa. "I took no less than three salsa lessons before dropping out of that stupid class entirely, so you should think twice before making accusations like that."

"Show me, then." The brunette cocked her eyebrow, smirking.

Zelda felt no real desire to dance with Lilith, of course, but she couldn't let her and the girls believe that she was a terrible dancer. She had a reputation to defend. "You're insufferable," she mouthed, placing one hand on Lilith's shoulder and the other on her waist, careful not to touch the naked skin between her waistband and the lower part of the tank top. A top that was rather tight and low-necked. Not that Zelda cared about that.

They swirled around clumsily, at first, and Zelda couldn't bear to glance at Lilith's face, staring at an imaginary point right behind the woman's head. She was painfully aware of each one of her body's movements, feebly controlled by the rhythm of the melody Prudence had begun to play on the piano. When her thumb accidentally glided over Lilith's exposed skin, soft and cold at the same time, she had to stop herself from gasping. Accepting that her evident refusal to look into Lilith's eyes was making that whole thing more awkward than it had to be, she gave up, at last, and smiled faintly at her, only to find the woman's blue irises staring back at her, filled with contentment. Braver, then, she took the lead, erupting into a swift pirouette, which made Lilith and the children laugh. Her fingers were tingling with delight and she felt lighter as Lilith closed the distance between them, their bodies almost touching. It was as if they'd done that before, Zelda thought; as if their souls had already danced together in another life, in another world. Dancing had never come easily to her, but, with Lilith as her partner, she moved effortlessly, feeling happy. Feeling loved.

That whole evening had been marvelous. Everything had been lovely and gentle and the moment she was sharing with Lilith was making Zelda's heart pump so rapidly against her ribcage that she was afraid that it would jump out of her throat and run away, singing and soaring with joy. In that instant, Zelda Spellman understood that she was falling in love with the rude, outspoken brunette that had so politely asked her to dance minutes before, after having ungraciously walked into her solitary life and firmly refused to leave. Lilith liked her, too, and Zelda could finally see that. It was as Sabrina had told her: Lilith stared at her as if she were genuinely interested in what she had to say, even if Zelda doubted that she'd ever shared a single fact the woman had truly deemed as fascinating. Zelda knew that she was plain and boring and often unkind, but Lilith looked at her as if she believed her to be capable of so much more. As if she were worthy.

But good things couldn't last forever. Lilith was going to leave her, one day. She was going to find out who she really was – all the meanness and the ugly parts of herself that she kept hidden in the darkest corners of her soul – and she was going to walk away. Or she would find another beautiful woman, younger and far more attractive than she was, and choose her instead of Zelda. It was inevitable, really. If life had ever taught her anything, it was that she was, in the end, fundamentally unlovable. Her parents had always preferred Edward to her; once Edward had betrayed them, daring to live as the truest version of himself, they'd chosen Hilda as their favorite. Even Faustus generally favored the company of other women, even if he thought that she couldn't smell it on him – the foreign perfumes, the sex, the betrayal. It was better to cut her losses right then and be done with it.

She brusquely stepped away from Lilith, stumbling backward. "That's enough," she said, turning her back on her and disappearing into the bedroom. There were only two candles in the room, but Lilith had placed her portable lamp on the nightstand and Zelda turned it on, sitting on the bed.

Lilith made her appearance shortly after, leaning against the door frame. "The kids are wondering why you left so soon. We were having fun," she said. There was no admonishment in her tone, but Zelda could spot a hint of disappointment in it. Of sadness, even. "I wish you would open up to me a little more."

"Why?" Zelda rebuked, her back stiff against the bed frame. She was clenching her jaw so violently that her whole face was beginning to hurt, but she didn't want to cry. Not again. "I don't know you. You don't know me. We'll be going our separate ways in a month or so. I don't have to tell you the woeful story of my life simply because you and I are almost literally the last humans left alive."

"No, you don't." The other woman blew out her cheeks, clasping her hands behind her back. The dark circles under her eyes were plainly visible in the twilight of that small room and she seemed tired. "I was hoping you'd tell it to me because we're friends."

"We are not _friends_ ," Zelda snapped, knowing that what she'd said was both hurtful and untrue, because Lilith had been the closest thing to a real friend she'd ever had. She regretted her words the second they left her mouth, but it was too late.

"Okay." Lilith pressed her fingers to her lips, no longer looking at her. "Okay," she repeated, starting to walk away.

"No, wait. Lilith, I'm sorry." Zelda jolted upright. "I didn't mean it like that."

The other woman lifted her hand, stopping Zelda before she could reach her side. "It really sounded like you did." Her voice quivered and Zelda's heart broke into a million pieces. "I'm going to sleep on the sofa. Or in the kids' room, since Sabrina has been having nightmares and she keeps waking Prudence up. I'll figure it out. Have a good night."

"Please." Zelda grabbed her arm, pressing into her naked skin with her nails. She released her grip immediately, afraid that she was hurting her, though Lilith's features had remained blank. "I _do_ like you." Her voice was trembling too, then, but she was no longer ashamed of it. She needed Lilith to believe that she hadn't meant a single word of what she'd told her. She needed to believe it herself. "I do. I truly do. Sometimes I even think that I might like you too much."

"I see." Lilith's expression changed, turning somber. "Is that where the trouble lies? Are you not allowed to be friends with someone like me?" she asked, taking in a shaky breath. "Do you honestly think that your God is going to turn you into a pillar of salt if you get too close? If you touch me?"

"No!" That wasn't the problem. But was it _part_ of it, maybe? Was Zelda so exceptionally messed up that a decent dose of religious guilt was lying on top of all the other bottled-up emotions she had to worry about? "It's nothing like that," she said, but she wasn't certain of it.

"But you don't want to risk it, do you?" Lilith gave out a sarcastic laugh, slapping her hand against the wall behind her. Collecting herself, she sighed deeply, squeezing the bridge of her nose. "It's okay. You can do your thing and I'll do mine. I'll get out of your hair as soon as I find a good place where Sabrina, Prudence and I can live comfortably, if that's what you want."

"It's not," Zelda protested, weakly. "I don't... I don't know what I want."

"Oh, but I think you do," Lilith said. As she left the room, Zelda thought she saw a solitary tear roll down the woman's cheek, but it could have been a trick of the light. She heard Sabrina and Prudence ask Lilith about her, but didn't catch Lilith's answer. It didn't matter, anyway. None of it did. If everything went according to plan, she would arrive at her sister's house within the month and leave that foolish life behind. Lilith and the girls would be happier on their own, surely. She blew out the candles and turned the lamp off, aware that Lilith wasn't going to join her that night. She lay down on the bed and tried to cry, her chest still aching with anger and regret, but the tears wouldn't come out.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pile of textbooks on my desk is currently staring at me menacingly, but I finally figured out a clear-ish outline for the rest of this story and I needed to write some more. Thank you for your support and I hope you will like this new part!

"It hurts too bad," Prudence cried out between sobs, heavy tears wetting her face. "It really hurts. I think it's broken."

"It's not broken, Prudence. Don't worry," Lilith said, gently lifting the kid's ankle and pressing on it lightly. "I broke my leg as a teenager and I can assure you that, if that were the case, you would be screaming like a banshee right now. It might be sprained, though. Can you walk on it?"

"I can't," Prudence replied. "I really can't. I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Zelda intervened, hiding her annoyance. They were behind schedule already, but it wasn't like the child had tripped on a slippery rock on purpose. "We can camp out here for the night and be on the move as soon as you feel better. Sabrina, help me pitch the tents," she added, talking to the other girl, who was apprehensively hovering around Lilith and her friend.

Zelda hadn't witnessed the fall, but she'd certainly heard it: not the quiet gasp Prudence had let out as she had tripped on the stone, but the loud imprecation Sabrina had produced when she'd seen her friend drop on the ground like a sack of potatoes. It had taken Zelda all her willpower not to reproach the rascal right then, her worry that Prudence might be badly hurt only slightly bigger than her desire to give Sabrina a lengthy lecture on curse words. Prudence was fine, all things considered, but her ankle was already looking quite swollen and it was apparent that she couldn't keep traveling in that state. After taking a tube of anti-inflammatory ointment out of her first-aid kit and handing it to Lilith, she started setting camp for the night. It was a two women's job, but, since Lilith was busy consoling Prudence, she figured that she could do it with Sabrina's help: a gross misjudgment, she realized, spotting the child stomping around the small glade they'd stopped at with her tent's fabric over her head, pretending to be a ghost in an attempt to make Prudence smile.

"Not helpful," Zelda said, snatching the fabric off her head.

"Grinch," Sabrina murmured.

"What did you say?" Zelda asked, having heard her perfectly and having watched the movie the girl was referring to several times. Not that Zelda Spellman usually liked silly Christmas pictures like that one, but Christine Baranski was simply marvelous in it.

"Nothing," Sabrina replied, beginning to build a campfire like she'd seen Lilith do many times before and leaving the rest to Zelda, who huffed and puffed as she set up the tents, but did a rather good job.

Lilith was sitting on a plaid blanket with Prudence, massaging the kid's ankle and occasionally giving her a tissue or two to dry her tears, telling her soft words of encouragement. Zelda hadn't had a real conversation with Lilith since that night in the candle-lit apartment: not counting the short exchanges they'd had when they had needed to talk about food and sleeping arrangements, Zelda could count the words they'd spoken to each other on the fingers of one hand. She badly wanted to resume talking to her and she was frankly embarrassed by how much she missed their chats, but her ego prevented her from apologizing to Lilith. She hadn't explicitly done anything to hurt the other woman and if Lilith was assuming things that were untrue, that was her problem and not Zelda's. If anything, it was Lilith who should have apologized to _her_ , instead of it being the other way around.

However, Lilith's silence had given her some time to analyze her own feelings in depth and she'd come to the conclusion that the strange emotions she'd experienced over the previous days had been nothing but the result of her isolation and obliged acquaintanceship with the brunette. It had been so stupid of her to think that she could have fallen for someone of the same gender. She might have had frivolous crushes on other ladies in the past, but who hadn't? She'd once been in awe of her high school physics tutor – a striking biology student in her twenties, with freckled skin and a heavily-tattooed forearm – and she used to joke about how much she _loved_ her gorgeous English literature professor, who was, in truth, the only person she missed from her college days. But had there ever been a single woman who hadn't even once stared at another woman's legs for a little too long? Who, on that planet, could honestly say that they'd never noticed a stunning lady during church services and wondered what it would have been like to be the unprepossessing man she was married to? No, it was final: Zelda Spellman, who had been clearly attracted to no one but men for the past forty-something years, did _not_ like women and she never would.

"I'm going to cook dinner," Lilith said, startling her. She was speaking to her again, but that sentence definitely fell under the category of exchanges required in order to survive together in the wilderness, which didn't truly count as progress. "You can keep Prudence company, if you want. She's in my tent."

"I will," Zelda said, disappointed that Lilith hadn't thanked her for setting everything up. She conveniently forgot that Lilith had done her plenty of favors without receiving even a token word of thanks in return.

She peeked into the tent, careful not to disturb Prudence, in case she'd fallen asleep. The kid was lying on her back, staring at the entrance. "Hi," she said, quietly.

"Hi," Zelda whispered, her irritation dissipating. The girl seemed drained, her eyes half-closed. "Am I bothering you? I can leave, if you want to sleep."

"No," she replied. "I asked Lilith if she could ask you to stay with me for a while. I feel so alone when she's not around." Well, that was certainly something she and Prudence had in common.

"She's preparing us something to eat." Zelda crawled next to Prudence, sitting near Lilith's sleeping bag. They'd stolen a larger tent a few days before so that the girls could both sleep next to Lilith and Zelda could maintain her privacy. A slightly selfish move on her part, of course.

"I'm not really hungry. I'm going to take a nap, I think."

"That's understandable. You've had quite the scare and the adrenaline is wearing off." She spread a thermal blanket over her, tucking it close. "Do you want me to tell you a story?" She'd never been the best storyteller, but the official raconteur of the group was busy heating up soup over a campfire, so Prudence would have to settle for the next best thing.

"Yes, please," she said, polite and sweet. She was the exact opposite of Sabrina, who, in that instant, was likely setting half the forest on fire or muddying up the interior of Zelda's tent with her dirty shoes for no reason other than her personal entertainment.

"Good. Let's see what I can come up with," Zelda said, lying next to the girl. She ran a hand over her face to check if her forehead was hot, but Prudence was merely tired after hours and hours of constant walking. She continued, "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful queen. She lived all alone in a huge castle, hidden in the middle of the woods. Her subjects, however, didn't like her very much."

"Why?" Prudence asked, yawning softly.

"She had some issues with anger management," Zelda explained, delicately caressing the girl's head. "Eventually, the queen got tired of being so unpopular and disliked by everyone. Mostly, she felt kind of lonely. She'd heard of an old witch, living in a cave near the sea, who could help her with her problem. One night, she sneaked out of the castle to pay her a visit, but she was surprised to see that the woman was actually beautiful, with long black hair and piercing blue eyes."

"Like Lilith?"

"A bit like her, yes." Zelda smiled, watching Prudence's eyelids drop gradually. "The queen begged the witch for a cure to her loneliness and the witch promised her that she would soon bear two little girls who would chase away the solitude. In exchange, the witch wanted the queen to part from one of the two children and give it to her. The queen agreed, thinking that one child would be more than enough."

"We could pretend that Sabrina and I are the two girls," Prudence mumbled.

"Of course," Zelda said. Prudence was evidently struggling to stay awake, but she also wanted to hear the end of that story, which made Zelda happier than she liked to admit. "Months later, the queen gave birth to two girls, whom she treasured with all her heart. The witch arrived at the castle the following day, claiming ownership of one of the newborns, but the queen couldn't choose which one to give up, as she'd grown fond of them both. She offered the witch to stay at the castle while she waited for her to make a decision and the dark-haired woman accepted. Days went by, then years, but the queen couldn't make up her mind. By then, the witch had learned to love both girls equally and she didn't want to part from one of them, either."

"Are the queen and the witch in love?"

"Do you want them to be?" Zelda asked.

"I do," Prudence said, on the verge of sleep. "I want them to be a family."

"Sure, then." Zelda breathed in, the smell of the jasmine shampoo Lilith always used permeating the air. "Over the years, the queen and the witch started falling in love. The affection they shared for the queen's daughters brought them together and, after a while, neither one of them could imagine living apart from the other. The witch gave up on her original plan, realizing that what she'd found was worth so much more than what she'd been looking for initially. They all lived happily ever after and the angry queen, surrounded by two girls and a woman who loved her, never felt lonely again," she concluded, seeing that Prudence had finally fallen asleep.

She let out a breath, stepping out of the tent. The night sky was pitch black and Lilith was standing near the fire, a few feet away from her position. She was feeling inexplicably uneasy, nearly jittery. Diving into her own tent, she reemerged with a pack of cigarettes she'd managed to get her hands on the week before and lit one of them, the familiar taste of nicotine calming down her thoughts. She wasn't going to take up smoking again, but she was allowed to enjoy a puff or two, especially when she felt stressed for no apparent reason. "Smoking is bad for you," Sabrina said, emerging from the shadows like a forest spirit.

Zelda snorted, stepping away from her so that she wouldn't inhale any second-hand smoke. She found the kid irksome, but still cared about her health. "So is criticizing adults you don't know well for their vices. Weren't you the one who said that Lilith and I might want to kill you and eat you for breakfast, back when we first met? You should be more careful."

"I said that you would eat us for dinner, but that's close enough," Sabrina corrected her. She took a hairbrush out of her pink backpack and handed it to Zelda, saying, "Can you brush my hair? I look like a scarecrow when I do it on my own and Lilith is cooking for all of us. Unless your cigarette is more important than I am."

"You're a master of psychological manipulation, aren't you?" Zelda said, stubbing out her cigarette. It wasn't even half-smoked yet, but maybe it was better that way. She'd always had trouble giving up things that she liked too much. "Come here," she added, sitting on the floor of her tent, her legs sticking out of it.

Sabrina didn't even consider the possibility of settling down next to her and chose to park herself on her legs instead. Zelda almost protested, wanting to point out her rudeness and tell her to stand up, but the girl was light as a feather and she was tired of playing the bad cop. Not that Lilith or anyone else had ever asked her to play that part, but it came naturally to her. "I changed my mind, though. About the dinner thing, I mean," Sabrina said. Zelda had started to gently brush her hair, only vaguely matted and disgusting.

"How come?" Zelda said, undoing a large knot.

"I don't think you're desperate enough. You don't look like you need to eat that badly," Sabrina explained, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket.

Zelda was taken aback by the girl's insolence, unsure why she still allowed it to surprise her. She'd known Sabrina long enough to expect certain remarks from her. "Was that an insult?"

Sabrina seemed to ponder the question. "Not really," she said, shrugging. She was rummaging through her backpack, as if to check that her few possessions were still there. "I like that your thighs are soft." Zelda's cheeks reddened and she had to stop herself from pushing the girl off her lap. She hoped that Lilith couldn't hear them, embarrassed by Sabrina's seemingly innocent observations. "You look a bit like my mom. But she was prettier than you are. No offense."

That last sentence made Zelda forget about her previous comment entirely, struck by the simplicity and warmth of that consideration. Sabrina, for once, hadn't meant to offend her; she'd simply been thinking about her mother, like Zelda herself often did when she felt lost and the future looked uncertain. "None taken," she said. "I'm sure she was beautiful."

"She was." Sabrina fell silent, tapping her fingers against Zelda's thigh to the rhythm of a popular tune Zelda couldn't remember the title of. Suddenly, she crossed her arms and said, "I'm sorry if I sound mean when I talk to you. My teachers always told me that I had a bad attitude, but it's not like I can control it. Sometimes the words come out and I can't stop them, you know?"

"I do," Zelda replied. Why was the girl's confession nearly bringing her to tears? Oh, but Zelda, deep inside her heart, was well aware of the reason: Sabrina was reminding her of herself. "It's okay. I tend to be mean too, even if I try not to be."

"I noticed," the child commented, resuming to search for something inside her bag. "Do you want to see a picture of my mom?"

Zelda wiped away a lone tear with the back of her hand. "Sure, I would love that."

Sabrina reached further into her backpack and pulled out a photo frame. Zelda noticed that the glass was cracked and she realized that the kid had been carrying it around since the day she had left her hometown with Prudence. Sniffling, she focused on the three figures standing in the middle of the image: a woman with blond hair was hugging a cheerful toddler who was undoubtedly a young Sabrina, preventing the little one from running away. Next to her, waving happily at whoever was taking the picture, was her own brother, Edward Spellman. "These are my mom and dad. Do you like them?"

"I do," Zelda stuttered, pushing down the bile that was rising at the back of her throat. _Edward_. Sabrina's father was Edward. Sabrina was her niece. "I really do. I need to step outside for a second. Stay here."

She slithered out of the tent, accidentally banging her head on one of its poles. She didn't stop to ask Lilith how the dinner preparations were going, certain that she was going to be sick soon. She staggered away from the campsite, the freezing air hitting her naked arms and tear-streaked face. She was right. She'd been right from the start. The child she'd randomly stumbled upon on her way to her sister's farm was her own niece. Sabrina had lied to her when she'd told her that her last name was White: it was Spellman. She was a Spellman. She was her niece. Her walk turned into a jog, which morphed into a sprint, as she didn't feel as nauseous if she kept moving. She wished she could just run away and disappear among the trees. Her niece. Her own niece and she'd been treating her so unkindly. Her own niece and she'd tried to convince herself that her brown eyes couldn't possibly have been Edward's. But they were, for she would have been able to recognize her brother's eyes anywhere and that young girl had inherited her father's clever gaze. A gaze she'd last met when their parents had kicked him out and she'd sat there and watched, powerless. No, not powerless: complicit, which was worse.

The sharp pain in her chest that had haunted her for days returned in all its vigor, forcing her to crouch down on the grass. She was sure that she was going to die, then, because what else could she have been experiencing, if not the heart attack that was going to end her life? Those spiraling thoughts were making the situation worse and her throat felt tight. She was no longer able to control her breathing and her body wasn't responding to her commands, her nails digging into her palms. She was crying harder, like she hadn't in a long time, and her sobs were preventing her from taking in the air she so desperately needed, yet her chest was rising and falling rapidly against her own wishes. She had to calm down. She had to collect herself and put an end to that pathetic show of weakness, but all she truly wanted to do was to lie down on the soil and do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing. She fixed her sight on the large trunk of the tree in front of her, covered in white mushrooms and slimy worms, taking in deep gulps of air. Her feet were numb from the cold and her fingers were tingling. She was hyperventilating. She needed to get a grip and control herself. She couldn't. That was when she first saw the creature: a pair of yellow eyes, big and bright as the moon, watching her intently, hidden in the dark. Waiting.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning, this might be the last chapter I share until mid-February. I have two exams coming up and I'm pretty burnt out, so I'll have to focus on uni for a while. I'll definitely be back after that, though (maybe earlier, if I do find some time to write a little)! Thank you, as always, for your lovely comments and kudos!

Zelda couldn't move. Her brain was telling her to sprint away and race back to the campsite, but her entire body was shaking, her chest burning. The animal was staring at her with a curious glimmer in its golden eyes, as if it were attempting to figure out what a weeping creature was doing in its territory: it was a wolf, indeed, with silvery fur and a confident stance, statue-like. It looked quite different from the frightening depictions of wolves in literature and cinema: the beast in front of her was no man-hungry monster; its ribs weren't showing and it didn't seem to be scanning Zelda to decide whether to eat her or not, which she took as a good sign. The wind was rising quickly, blowing from behind Zelda, and the wolf lifted its head to sniff the air, almost lazily. Was it smelling whatever Lilith had decided to cook for dinner? Did it know that there were three more people a few feet away from where they were standing, tired and defenseless? Even if Zelda had been able to move her legs, she couldn't have gone back to her tent. The risk of leading the animal directly to Lilith and the girls was one Zelda couldn't take.

Zelda rose up from her crouching position, slowly. The wolf didn't react, merely keeping an eye on her. She took a step back, barely breathing, but something else came out of the shadows, tottering with far less elegance than its adult counterpart: it was a wolf pup, grayish and soft-looking, with no littermates in sight. The tiny beast stammered toward her on unsteady paws, occasionally shooting glances at its mother as if to make sure that it was allowed to play with that strange creature, furless and covered in odd fabrics. Zelda knew better than to make any abrupt movements around an animal's offspring while the parent was watching, so she stood still as the little predator's tail started wiggling in excitement, its black nose furiously sniffing Zelda's shoes. Zelda had assumed that there would be no more wolves in that part of the country, but, evidently, she'd been wrong: most of mankind had been missing for weeks and wild critters had begun to take back what had never belonged to humans in the first place. She was the intruder in that forest, after all; the wolf and its puppy were graciously letting her and her group pass through it.

Satisfied, the pup toddled away from her, lying on the grass in front of its mother, who had never once lifted its eyes from Zelda. It was rare to find a wolf without its pack, Zelda considered. What could have forced the animal to leave its own kind? She'd watched a documentary, back when sitting in front of the television on a quiet Saturday evening sounded nearly boring, about pack animals and their behavior: she could recall a white-haired natural historian talking about older female wolves and how they were occasionally driven from the pack by the breeding male. Was that what had happened to the regal creature in front of her? Had it been all alone when its pup was born? Was it struggling every single day so that they both had enough food to continue to exist in that unkind world? More importantly, why in the name of God were those useless speculations making Zelda cry again?

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, glad that no one had been there to witness her breakdown. She looked at the critter, cautiously stepping backward: it was apparent that, as long as Zelda didn't do anything to hurt its pup, the wolf wasn't going to attack her. It had no reason to: with all humans gone, the predators living in those woods clearly had enough prey to survive. As the animal seemed relatively innocuous, Zelda deemed it safe to return to the campsite, but she took one more moment to admire the scene in front of her: the wolf was gently nuzzling its puppy as the little one gnawed on a fallen pinecone, paying no attention to Zelda anymore. She wondered if the mother had smelled her fear and judged her harmless, but liked to think that, perhaps, the creature had sensed her pain and had allowed her to be the privileged observer of such an intimate display of love and care. At the end of the day, were beasts truly that different from people? Weren't they all looking for food, shelter, warmth, and someone to share all of that with?

Her mind wandered back to Sabrina, then to Prudence and Lilith. She had to go back. She began to walk away, her face turned in the direction of the two wolves until they were swallowed by darkness. Once she could no longer see them, she turned and ran toward the glade as fast as her legs could carry her. Her path was illuminated by the bright glow of the moon and she felt weak, her pulse pounding in her temples. The temperature had dropped significantly and she was shivering, wearing nothing but a tracksuit too big for her figure, but her head was on fire and her eyes threatened to spill over again. Reaching the clearing, she spotted Lilith: the woman was sprawled on a plaid blanket by the campfire, reading her copy of _Orlando_ , a steaming bowl of what must have been soup next to her. Another empty bowl sat on her left, a dirty spoon inside it. Not only had Lilith prepared dinner for Zelda, but she was making sure that it would be warm by the time she returned. Zelda had treated her badly, but Lilith had done that anyway.

"Oh, you're back. The kids and I were starving, but I saved something for you," the brunette said, getting up. Noticing Zelda's disheveled condition, she added, "Are you okay?"

"I saw a wolf," Zelda muttered, the reality of that encounter setting in as she pronounced the words. "A she-wolf. With a puppy. It sniffed my shoes."

"What?" Lilith half-yelled, dropping her novel. "You saw wolves? In these woods?"

"Yes," Zelda replied, the tight feeling under her breastbone quietly returning.

"Holy shit. Are you injured?" Zelda shook her head: she was hurting, naturally, but not in the physical sense. Lilith, still open-mouthed, ran past her and jumped into her tent. She came out holding her backpack and pulled a large can out of it. "Alright. I've got this under control. We can use bear spray to chase them away if they get any closer. It should work."

"Why do you have bear spray with you?" Zelda said, knowing it was a stupid question. Lilith, as usual, was prepared. Lilith, as always, was ready to save the day. Lilith, who cared so much, was all set to rescue Zelda, who cared too little.

"What kind of question is that? To scare off any hypothetical fucking bears, Zelda," Lilith whispered, but did so in a way that was somehow twice as loud as normal speech. "What the fuck else would bear spray be for?"

"You're right. Yes, you're right. I'm... I'm sorry," Zelda mumbled. Her tongue was in knots and the reason why she'd sprinted away in the first place was coming back to her: Sabrina was her niece. Her own brother's daughter. She had to tell Lilith. She needed someone else to know, but she was afraid that her voice would break if she tried to talk. She sat down on the grass, holding her legs and staring at the flames, her eyelids shut.

"What's wrong?" Lilith kneeled down next to her trembling body and Zelda suddenly felt the weight of her companion's coat on her shoulders. She tried to get the jacket off, not wanting Lilith to offer her yet another olive branch when she did not deserve even one of its leaves, but the woman wouldn't let her. "Keep that on. You're freezing. Did something happen with Sabrina? I saw you bolt out of your tent like a frightened rabbit."

"Oh, God." Zelda let out a whimper, covering her mouth with her palm. That was definitely not the best time to lose control once more. She had so much to explain.

"You're scaring me," the other woman said, calmer. Her long fingers were resting on Zelda's wrist, pressing delicately on her cold skin. "Just tell me, Zelda. I'm starting to get worried."

Zelda laid the icy back of her hand against her forehead, exhausted. "Sabrina is my niece," she blurted out, supposing that there was no right or wrong way to share such a piece of information. "Edward's daughter."

Lilith's jaw hit the ground. In hindsight, she should have probably tried to be less direct. "Come again?"

"There really isn't much else to add," she said, bursting into frantic laughter. She was beginning to sound hysterical and she was aware of it, but she couldn't control the high pitch of her tone. "My brother had a child and that child is Sabrina. She showed me a picture of her family and there he was, smiling and waving at the camera like he's not dead like the rest of them." Having overcome the last stage of denial, all that was left for Zelda was the realization that all the people she'd once cared about had left that world forever. "Either that or he disappeared into thin air. I don't know. It doesn't matter. They're all gone." Her throat closed up for the umpteenth time that night and she looked downward, biting her lip.

"Okay," Lilith said. She paused, clicking her tongue. "You neglected to mention that you had a niece, but this is great. Isn't it great? We can look after her. I mean, you can. If you want. You want that, don't you?"

Zelda didn't answer. An earthworm was crawling out of a tiny mountain of mud a few inches away from her right foot and she felt the desire to squash it, but she doubted that Lilith would have appreciated the killing of an innocent worm simply because she needed to take her anger out on something. She watched it as it slithered away from the campfire and dived back into the dirt that was its home. Nature wasn't going to collapse because humankind had. She thought of Sabrina again. She thought of Edward. How to explain to such a young kid that she was her long-lost aunt who had abandoned her father when the rest of his family had forsaken him? What if Edward had told her about her and the child just hadn't connected the dots yet? It might have been better not to confess anything to her at all. Besides, the girl loved Lilith more. Zelda knew she did. How could she blame her? Lilith was genuine and kind. Zelda was only Zelda. Which wasn't always a good thing.

"You _do_ want to tell her, right?" Lilith asked.

Zelda shrugged. "She's better off not knowing." She raised her gaze to meet the other woman's. "She already hates me."

"She doesn't hate you, Zelda. She's been through a lot and you have to give her some more time."

"Please," she scoffed, sniffling. It was obvious that Lilith was taking pity on her and she wasn't seeking her sympathy. At least, she was trying to convince herself that she wasn't. "I'm hardly the embodiment of a perfect parental substitute. Prudence and Sabrina would both be much happier if they lived with you. I never planned to pick orphans up from the streets during this journey, anyway."

"You are fucking insufferable when you talk like that." Zelda gasped. There was neither playfulness nor affection in Lilith's tone. For the first time since they'd met, she could see that Lilith was angry. "Will you stop with your constant self-flagellation for once and actually listen to me? Believe it or not, you aren't the main character in this story and the universe doesn't revolve around your insecurities." Zelda could see that Lilith was struggling against her rage, but the woman lowered her voice, her fists still clenched. "Those children have lost everything. It was bad enough that you wanted to leave them in the forest, but refusing to take Sabrina with you is on a whole other level entirely. Do you not have a heart?"

Zelda felt anger well up in her chest as well. "As a matter of fact, I do. That's how I know that I could never treat those girls with the same compassion that you show them." Her irritation flared higher and her head was spinning again. "You said I'm continually punishing myself, but have you ever paused and considered that maybe it's because I believe that I deserve it? I never pretended to be a decent human being. I know I'm not. But I do have a heart and it works perfectly fine and sometimes I wish it didn't, but it does. And I feel so much. All the time. All the _fucking_ time," she screamed, slamming her fist on her thigh, almost hoping it would leave a bruise. She wanted the physical pain to match the inner one.

Lilith was noticeably taken aback by the unexpected curse word, but she recovered quickly. She settled down on the ground next to Zelda and scooted closer to her, cupping her cheeks with her hand. Her fingers were warm and a little rough, but Zelda didn't mind the sensation. She found herself close to craving it, in fact. It was as if Lilith's blue eyes were able to scour the depths of Zelda's own soul and she could barely hold the brunette's gaze as her thumb caressed the side of her face. "But that's the problem, Zelda." They were so near that Zelda wondered if Lilith could hear the sound of her unsteady heartbeat; if she could somehow perceive her thoughts and feel her wants – even the ones she did not dare admit to herself. "You are not a bad person. You are good. You are so, so good."

"You don't think that," Zelda murmured, hoping for Lilith to disagree. Knowing that she would.

"I do." Lilith smiled. "I really do."

Something ignited within Zelda. Her eyes drifted toward Lilith's lips, cracked by the cold. She instinctively ran her tongue over her own, tasting blood and rainwater. A thunderstorm was breaking out overhead, but Zelda didn't even think about darting clumsily through the mud to reach her tent and fetch her umbrella. Small drops were falling on Lilith's hand, still resting on her cheek, red and puffed up from all the tears, and Zelda knew what she had to do. No more hidden desires and half-whispered truths; no more running away from who she was and what she felt. She missed her old life, of course. She wished she'd done things differently, but that was in the past and she had to start living in the present. And Lilith was there, right in front of her, very present and very real, and so was the furtive hunger that gnawed at her core, imploring her to do something. To _feel_ something again. It was raining more heavily and she was having trouble making out the outline of Lilith's face – all sharp angles, yet her features looked gentle in the dim light of the fire. Would the water cleanse her of the act she was about to commit? Did she even need the cleansing?

Without a second thought, she pulled Lilith's head toward her, ready to meet her lips with her own. Her body was begging her to do so and, even if merely for a moment, she believed that things could work out. That she could be happy again. Their foreheads touched, their noses bumping against one another, and Zelda knew what she wanted, at last. She knew that she had wanted that for a long time. As she was about to close the distance between them, Lilith pulled away from her. "No," she said, drawing her hand back and getting up.

"What?" Zelda's muscles grew tense at once and her breath hitched. Tears were distorting her vision and she wanted to stand up as well, but her lower body was refusing to collaborate. "Why?" she asked, unable to say more, fearing that the scream of exhaustion that had been brewing inside her lungs for hours would finally come out and drown out every other sound.

"Oh, Zelda," Lilith said, crouching down again to run her fingers through Zelda's red locks, soaking wet. Her expression was a kind one, as if she were talking to a child. Zelda suddenly felt naked. She felt stupid. "Now is not the time to break each other's hearts."

But what if Zelda wanted her heart to break? What if that was the only way? "I don't understand," she protested, suppressing a sob.

"You're in shock. Trust me, you will thank me for this in a couple of hours," Lilith said, picking up her soggy novel, headed back to her tent.

"Where are you going?" Zelda asked, raindrops falling on her skin like bullets. The burning sensation inside her was gone, replaced by a strong ache in the depths of her belly; a tangible darkness that was flooding the secret corners of her soul.

Lilith sighed, not meeting Zelda's eye. "I have to put the girls to bed. We need to keep watch tonight, in case the wolves decide to make a surprise appearance. Warn me when you're going to sleep and I'll take over." She disappeared under the fabric of her tent without even looking in Zelda's direction one last time. Had she dared to turn back, she would have seen that Zelda had failed to keep her tears from falling and she was then looking up at the silent moon, touching the cheek Lilith had tenderly caressed mere seconds before, crying softly.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind me, I'm just taking a break from studying to share something I should definitely not have written during the worst final exam period of my life. Again, you will probably not see me for another week or two after this, but I will be back. I'm not that easy to get rid of. I hope you will enjoy this!

Zelda had always loved books. From the moment her mother had taught her how to tell letters apart, a few months before starting primary school, Zelda had fallen deeply in love with reading and had consumed novel after novel over the years: fictional works, self-help books, thrillers, collections of poetry, romantic stories that made her blush and weep in secret, the whole lot. Yet, the many, many tales she'd read over the years, ranging from murder mysteries to Greek tragedies, had never taught her what one should do when reunited with a niece one had never met before and rejected by a woman one had strong and confusing feelings for, all in the span of one evening. So, of course, Zelda Spellman did the one thing she was very good at, which was absolutely nothing.

Unfortunately, doing nothing and ignoring one's problems forever seldom worked out, which Zelda immediately realized when, days after her tear-filled declaration and subsequent rejection, she found herself lying on a queen-sized bed, Lilith's arm gracefully resting on her stomach, the woman's hand dangerously close to her naked thigh. In hindsight, Zelda shouldn't have worn such a short nightgown when she knew that she and Lilith would be sharing a mattress – the flat they'd broken into only had a double bed and two single ones and she hadn't wanted the girls to suspect that things between her and Lilith were tense by asking them to camp out in the master bedroom – and, technically, she could have agreed to sleep on the couch, but why did _she_ have to suffer, if Lilith was the one to blame? Most likely, at least. She was conveniently forgetting that, generally, when it came to disagreements and miscommunications, both people involved were at fault, but she was too hurt to admit that trying to kiss a woman shortly after telling her that they weren't even friends might not have been the best decision of her life.

But Lilith had felt something too, right? She'd seen how she looked at her. She had ears and those ears worked perfectly well and they had caught every little attempt at flirting and every silly comment on her appearance that the brunette had ever made, even if Zelda had often pretended not to hear them. So _why_ had Lilith pulled away when she'd wanted to close the distance between them and finally kiss her? The memory of that moment made her face grow hot out of sheer embarrassment. That, and the fact that Lilith's fingers were, by then, fully touching the upper part of her leg, while her arm was pressing gently against Zelda's belly, where a treacherous warmth had been blossoming for the past few minutes and was spreading to the rest of her body like a disease. Except, it was no disease. Except, it felt good. Too good, which was why Zelda had to move away from Lilith as soon as possible and it was vital that she didn't wake her traveling companion in the process. It was obvious that they hadn't fallen asleep like that and that Lilith had unconsciously scooted closer toward her during the night, but Zelda didn't want her to get any strange ideas. From that moment on, she would never share a bed with that woman again. It was too risky. It felt too nice.

She attempted to slither away, pressing her whole figure against the mattress and moving toward its edge as quietly as she could, but that made Lilith emit a soft whimper and move her hand, which fell directly on Zelda's right breast and nearly made the redhead's brain explode. As if on cue, her nipple involuntarily grew hard at the touch of Lilith's fingers, her body betraying her once again. Trapped _and_ aroused. Oh, that was simply great. Convinced that her cheeks had reached an entirely new shade of dark red, she looked up at the ceiling, said a quick prayer, took a deep breath, and slowly lifted Lilith's arm from her chest, begging whatever deity was still around after the downfall of humanity to let the other woman stay in the realm of Morpheus for a while longer. Apparently, someone up there had been observing that pathetic scene and had listened to her pitiful request, as Lilith did not, in the end, open her eyes while she was maneuvering her way out of that bed. Unfortunately, the divine being in question also had a ghastly sense of humor and she fell off the edge of the mattress within seconds, hitting the cold floor with a thud.

Sitting on her knees and lifting her head like a frightened meerkat, she saw that Lilith had kept on sleeping and she knew, right then, that she'd used up all her good luck for the next ten years. Even so, she deemed it too risky to get up and walk out of the door like a rational human being, so she started crawling on the floor, careful not to make even the faintest noise. Out of the room, at last, she turned around to make sure that Lilith hadn't moved and almost let out a scream when someone tapped on her shoulder. "Why are you sneaking out like that?"

"Prudence!" she exclaimed, hurriedly lifting herself up from the floor, her backside hurting from her recent fall. "Nothing. I was exercising. Stretching. It's good for your joints." The child stared at her confusingly, furrowing her brow. "Forget about it. What are you doing up so early?" She didn't know what time it was, exactly, but the sun had barely begun to rise, so it must have been around seven in the morning and the children categorically refused to get up before eight, if she and Lilith were lucky.

"Sabrina is cooking breakfast and she wanted me to help her."

"Oh, that's lovely," Zelda commented, only half-listening, still thinking about the weight of Lilith's palm casually lying on her breast. "No, wait," she added, shaking her head. "Sabrina is doing _what_?" she asked, having processed what the child had said.

"Baking a cake. It's going to be great!" Prudence smiled, headed back to the kitchen.

In her forty-something years on that planet, Zelda had never sprinted that quickly from one room to another, fearing the worst. As the horrifying picture of Sabrina setting that entire house on fire began to form in her head, she reached the kitchen counter, where the blonde girl was peacefully cutting up an apple. Using Zelda's butcher's knife. "What are you up to?" Zelda whispered, calmly, not wanting to startle her. The last thing she needed was Sabrina accidentally slicing her thumb off.

"I'm making a cake," Sabrina answered, matter-of-factly, as if that were the stupidest thing Zelda could have asked her. "I figured you wouldn't do anything special for Lilith's birthday, so Prudence and I are preparing breakfast for her. Do you like it?" she said, moving to her left so that Zelda could observe her culinary creation.

Zelda wouldn't have called that abomination a cake, for sure: the child had stolen some dry biscuits from the cupboards and had arranged them in a misshapen circle, piling one on top of the other and adding a few apple slices here and there. Sabrina's words dawning on her, she inquired, "Lilith's birthday, you said? Is it today?"

"Yes," Prudence intervened. "She told us last night."

Why hadn't Lilith warned her? They weren't exactly on speaking terms, but birthdays only happened once a year and she could have made an exception. Found her a nice gift, at least. Apologized, maybe. For pretty much everything. "And when did you steal my knife, if you don't mind telling me? And what about those apples? Where do they come from?"

"There's an apple tree in the backyard. They're delicious," Prudence explained, taking a large bite out of one of them and chewing noisily. "Take one, if you want. We picked too many."

"I borrowed the knife from you this morning, while you and Lilith were still asleep," the other girl said, nonchalantly. "You were snoring. It was kind of funny."

"I don't snore!" Zelda protested, appalled by that entire situation. "Taking things from others without asking them first counts as stealing, you know? Give that to me." She took the weapon away from Sabrina, its blade covered in apple bits. "Never do that again. It's dangerous. You could have hurt yourself with this."

Sabrina puffed out her cheeks, but didn't protest. Zelda stared at the so-called cake again, wondering why Lilith had hidden that piece of information from her. Had they truly drifted apart so irreparably? Her reflections were soon interrupted by the brunette herself, staggering into the room, her hair a mess of tangled curls. "Happy birthday!" Sabrina and Prudence said in unison, running up to her and hugging her tightly.

"Oh, thank you! This is incredible," the woman said, affectionately patting the girls' heads, spotting the dessert Sabrina had prepared for her. "You made me breakfast?"

"We did." Sabrina grinned widely, taking Lilith's hand and leading her to the kitchen counter. Zelda tried unbelievably hard not to remember that that same hand had been resting on her breast up until mere minutes before, but some thoughts were too loud to be swatted away and she blushed again, bringing her own fingers to her cheeks, covering the red flush that had suddenly rushed up to her face.

"Thank you, girls," Lilith repeated. She seemed sincerely moved by the gesture. "No one had ever done anything like this for me before."

"Not even your husband?" Sabrina asked, impertinent as ever. "Or wife?" she added, shooting a furtive look at Zelda. What in the name of all saints had _that_ been for? Such an insolent girl. In that instant, Zelda recalled that the rude child in question was her niece – a detail she would have to share with her, eventually, though it was probably better to tackle one crisis at a time.

"I did have a husband, but he wasn't as nice as you are." A sad smile crossed Lilith's features, but it was gone in a second, replaced by a more genuine smirk. "How about the two of you wash yourselves up and get dressed? We'll eat this together once you're out of your smelly pajamas."

The children nodded unenthusiastically and disappeared into their bedroom, leaving Zelda and Lilith alone in the kitchen. Zelda cleared her throat to fill the awkward silence, not sure where to begin. "You didn't tell me it was your birthday." Starting off with such an accusatory tone might not have been the smartest move, but Zelda wasn't certain she was even capable of talking to the other woman without sounding at least slightly aggressive.

"It must have slipped my mind." Lilith didn't meet her eye.

"You told Prudence and Sabrina last night." Zelda crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, not wanting to appear too hostile.

"You were already asleep when I turned in and I thought it would be inappropriate to wake you up from your slumber to tell you that the anniversary of my birth was coming up." Lilith gave a shrug, signaling that the matter was settled, as far as she was concerned. "Besides, you were snoring quite loudly. It sounded like you were getting some good sleep."

Zelda gasped. "Why is everyone saying that? I don't snore!"

"You do. Only a little." Lilith looked up from the cake, at last, and winked at Zelda, whose stomach fluttered at once. Her pride was hurt, but she would have sacrificed every ounce of self-esteem she had left, had that meant that the old, cheeky Lilith would be making a much-awaited comeback. "Well, I love those kids, but this looks like shit," she whispered, pointing at the apple-flavored atrocity Sabrina had produced.

Zelda couldn't help but let out a hearty laugh, feeling as if she could finally breathe for the first time in days. Had Lilith forgiven her? She suspected that the woman would want to talk to her about everything that had happened, like she always did, but, for the time being, laughing together in front of a mountain of expired biscuits would do. "It really does. I'm a terrible cook and even I could manage to make something better." She picked up a half-chopped apple and bit into it, handing another one to Lilith. "Happy birthday."

Lilith accepted the odd gift, her fingers brushing against the back of Zelda's hand, which sent a shiver up the redhead's spine. It took Zelda everything she had not to visibly tremble. "Thank you," the brunette said, lifting up the bruised fruit as if it were a chalice of refined white wine. Zelda looked away when a trickle of transparent juice ran down Lilith's chin, pretending not to notice.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully, which, considering how chaotic their lives had been lately, was a nice change. Sabrina and Prudence spent most of it running around the apartment with old toys and books they'd found in their room, periodically asking Lilith to play with them. Lilith, busy with maps and a comically large calculator she was using to determine how long it would take them to get to Hilda's farm, had eventually asked Zelda if she would like to entertain the kids for a while. Zelda, conscious that she couldn't keep playing the bad cop forever, had begrudgingly accepted and she had soon found herself wearing a fairy costume the girls had dragged out of a dusty closet, making up stories about ogres and kind witches who lived in forests exceptionally similar to the one they were crossing. When Lilith had peeked into the bedroom to make sure that everything was alright and she had seen her with that silly dress on, her expression had been impassive, but Zelda had heard her let out a quiet snort as she was walking back in the direction of the living room.

Night came quickly and Zelda felt exhausted, amazed by the amount of energy required to look after two young kids. They'd eaten a rich dinner – as rich as a meal could be, given the circumstances – to celebrate Lilith's birthday and she was lying on the couch, full and worn out, as Sabrina read a children's book on the carpet in the middle of the sitting room. Suddenly, the girl frowned and dog-eared her novel, moving closer toward Zelda until she could comfortably whisper in her ear. Zelda narrowed her eyes, unsure what to expect. "Why is Lilith mad at you?" The question almost made Zelda groan out loud. "What did you do?"

"Why do you assume that I'm the one who did something bad?"

"You're the meanest one." Sabrina pressed her lips together, sighing.

Zelda would have given anything not to be having that conversation with her long-lost niece after the draining day she'd just had. "I didn't do anything. Adults fight, occasionally. It's normal."

"Then why don't you tell her that you're sorry?"

"It's not that easy," Zelda said, but wondered if, perhaps, it actually was. "You shouldn't worry about that."

"When I fight with Prudence, I always apologize. I even give her a hug after, so that she knows that I'm not angry anymore. You should do that." Sabrina tilted her head, expecting Zelda to rebut, but the woman didn't quite know what to answer. The child obviously hadn't the faintest clue of what she was talking about, but her suggestion hadn't seemed too unreasonable. Was it really that easy? Would Lilith even have accepted an apology from her, after all the emotional turmoil she'd put her through?

"You should go to bed. It's late," she said, after a long wait, crinkling her nose.

"And you should listen to my advice," Sabrina half-murmured to herself, as if she secretly wanted Zelda to catch her words – which she absolutely did, by the way. Snarkiness aside, the girl obeyed, getting up from the carpet and suppressing a yawn. "Goodnight, then," she said. Much to Zelda's surprise, she came up to her and gave a swift kiss on the cheek. She then made a jokey gagging sound and ran away from her as if she were pestilent. Zelda was too shocked to react, unable to figure out what she'd done to deserve such a sweet gesture, only to remember that she was still wearing that stupid fairy costume, which might have greatly helped her win over the girls' affection.

"I like that you're experimenting with new clothing choices. A bit bold for my taste and not what I would pick out for you, but it suits you," Lilith said, giving her a small fright. She was holding two mugs of hot tea and she promptly handed one to her. She then sat on the far end of the sofa and Zelda drew up her legs to make space for her, too tired to make any drastic movements. "To help with the digestion. I think that the tomato sauce might have been way past its expiration date."

Zelda smiled, her breath quickening. "Thank you," she said, accepting the beverage. She stared at Lilith for what felt like an eternity, only to finally speak in a somewhat high-pitched voice — as she tended to do when she knew, deep within, that she was in the wrong. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, her palms clammy.

"Care to be more specific?" Lilith joked, but her expression grew serious at once, noticing the signs of anxiety in Zelda's body language. "I am, too. I shouldn't have walked away like that. I hope you can understand why I did it."

"I do," Zelda said and she was surprised to realize that she had meant it. If a woman she barely even knew had come up to her in a traumatized state and had tried to kiss her, Zelda would have turned her down just like Lilith had. Sabrina had been right: trying to see things from Lilith's point of view and apologizing to her hadn't been such a terrible idea, after all. "I didn't mean what I said about us not being friends," she added, her chest heavy with worry. She couldn't take another rejection from Lilith, though she was aware that it would have been well-deserved. "I think we are."

"I think so too." Lilith smiled softly and Zelda saw her shoulders relax as she made herself more comfortable on the couch, unceremoniously lifting Zelda's legs and letting them fall onto her lap. It took Zelda's brain a couple of seconds to register what had just happened and she started to draw up her feet, but Lilith said, "Don't move. I don't mind."

Oh, but Zelda did. Well, she wasn't particularly bothered by the thought of her bare legs lying on top of Lilith's, scarcely covered by the thin fabric of the thighs she'd put on under that godforsaken fairy dress, but hadn't she promised herself that she would never put herself in such confusing situations again that very morning? A little physical contact wouldn't hurt, of course. Besides, they would have to share a bed again that night, since they'd chosen not to go through the trouble of breaking into another house that day, so it was better to become more acquainted with Lilith's presence. Not _too_ acquainted, clearly. She swore to herself that she was going to stand right up and go straight to bed if the woman tried to do anything inappropriate. Yet, when Lilith began to mindlessly rub her thumb over her knee, too captivated by the map she was holding to pay any attention to Zelda, the redhead didn't do anything at all, shamefully enjoying the casual contact, as if they were two old lovers unwinding on a sofa after a stressful workday. A ridiculous consideration, evidently, but a pleasing one.

Strongly aware of the woman's touch, distracted by the sound of her blood rushing through her ears, Zelda didn't hear what Lilith said next. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I said that I might have figured out a way to get to your sister's farm more quickly than we originally planned." The corners of the brunette's lips were turned upward and Zelda's stomach ached, but she suspected that it had nothing to do with the aforementioned tomato sauce. "There's a navigable river nearby and, believe it or not, I know how to drive a boat."

"A boat?" Zelda exclaimed, but she wasn't focusing on Lilith's words anymore. "That would work," she said, forgetting the fact that she was an awful swimmer and that she used to get seasick every single time her father took her and her siblings fishing and that traveling by boat was most definitely not a good plan. In that moment, nothing mattered but the sensation of Lilith's thighs lightly pressing against her own and the fullness and longing of her heart. "We could do that," she added, not knowing what awaited them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, I'm back with another part of this story! There are some mentions of physical abuse in this update, so a big trigger warning for that. Also, I'm talking about periods again. Sue me. I hope you will like this and thank you for your patience!

"Are you going to be sick again?" Sabrina asked, halfheartedly trying to mask her concern. "Should I tell Lilith and ask her to slow down a bit?"

The girl's voice had come from behind Zelda and the redhead assumed she was talking to her, since she was the only person standing on the outside deck of the scenic boat they'd stolen earlier that day. And since she was, in fact, very close to throwing up for the fourth time in the span of a few hours. "That would help. Thank you," she replied, staring at her own feet in an attempt to fix her eyes on something steady.

Zelda was aware that she had made several bad choices over the course of that long journey, but agreeing to steal a large, functioning riverboat and allowing Lilith to drive it was certainly among the worst ones. In truth, Lilith wasn't doing such an awful job at piloting their new means of transport: she'd sworn to Zelda that she'd gotten a proper boating license in her twenties and, though she was noticeably out of practice, it was clear that she wasn't lying about her abilities. Obviously, Zelda hadn't expected that their vessel would end up being a narrowboat very similar to the picturesque canal boats built to fit the narrow locks of England, or that they would occasionally spot yellow-eyed alligators in the waters below them. The real problem, however, was that Zelda, so captured by Lilith's silhouette as she sat next to her on a soft couch in a dimly-lit apartment, had forgotten about her proverbial seasickness and, once her brain had resumed working correctly, she had simply assumed that her stomach would hold out, strengthened by months of living in the wilderness. That was, of course, where she'd been wrong.

She lifted her gaze and looked skyward, the warm sunrays shining on her pale face giving her some fleeting comfort. The farther south they traveled, the more tepid the days became, though Zelda knew how uncertain the weather could be in that part of the country and she had insisted that they kept carrying all their warm clothes with them – a correct intuition, as the boat they'd stolen was bare of necessities and they were going to use their jackets and coats as blankets that night. She let her sight wander away from the fast-moving clouds and she took in the landscape: the murky, alligator-infested waters surrounding them were far from breathtaking, but the tall mountains, far into the distance, gave her a sense of possibility. She prayed, then, that there would be other good, compassionate humans out there, telling herself that violent men with guns couldn't be the only survivors of that absurd apocalypse. It was possible that some of those same civilized people had begun to rebuild families and communities and that society would rise from its ashes in the near future, stronger and more caring than it had been before. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it made Zelda's heart feel a little less heavy.

"Are you even listening to me?" Sabrina's voice brought her back to reality. "Do you need to puke again? Do you want me to get you a bucket or something?"

Zelda appreciated the child's concern, though the girl had yet to learn that constantly mentioning the act of vomiting to a nauseous person was, in fact, not the best course of action. "I already have one." Zelda pointed at the red plastic bucket that Lilith had found weeks before, shortly before their first encounter with Prudence and Sabrina. "What else did you say? I was thinking about something else," she explained, closing her eyes and swallowing hard.

"Lilith said that we'll have to stop for the night soon. She thinks that the current might be stronger upstream. I don't know what that means, but she said that it's too risky to keep going." Then, as if to make sure that Zelda – her eyelids firmly shut, her stomach swirling – was paying attention to her that second time, she added, "She also said that she loves you and that she wants to have a hundred babies with you. No, a thousand!" She laughed, amused by her own joke. "And kiss you on the _mouth_!"

In spite of everything, Zelda chuckled at that, blushing faintly. "What a little comedian you are," she commented.

Sabrina smiled, sticking out her tongue. Before Zelda could let her know how improper that was for a young lady, Prudence appeared behind her friend, her sight fixed on the wooden planks under her feet. "Zelda," she said, barely audible. "I need your help." Her shoulders were shaking, as if she were trying not to cry.

Zelda forgot about her nausea at once, stepping toward her on unsteady legs. "Is there something wrong?"

"It's private," the child whispered. Sabrina, never the subtle type, started bombarding her with questions, but Prudence stood there sniffling, not meeting anyone's eye. "Please," she added, ignoring her friend's persistent inquiries and wiping her nose with her sleeve.

"Stay here, Sabrina. Warn Lilith if you see anyone or anything out of the ordinary," Zelda told the blonde girl, figuring that giving her a task would keep her occupied for at least a few minutes. Sabrina frowned, but followed Zelda's instructions and didn't trail behind her as she raced past the cockpit and entered the small sleeping quarters with Prudence in tow. "What's going on?" she asked her. Seeing that the child was weeping silently, she spoke to her in the most reassuring tone she could muster and said, "Are you hurt? You know you can tell me anything, don't you?"

"Lilith said to call you because she was busy piloting the boat," Prudence answered. A little harsh, but Zelda was used to being the children's second choice by then and she didn't even flinch at that. In that instant, all that mattered was making Prudence feel safe with her. "I'm not feeling well."

"Okay," Zelda said, waiting for her to elaborate. "Are you feeling sick like I am?" She wasn't certain she could handle another person's seasickness in addition to her own, but she could try her best.

"No." Prudence shook her head, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands. "I got my first period. There's a lot of blood and it stained my clothes. I'm so sorry." Another tear rolled down her cheek and Zelda's own throat closed up.

That was definitely unexpected. Wasn't Prudence too young to be getting her period already? After a swift mental calculation, Zelda considered that the girl was a year older than Sabrina and that her own monthly curses had started when she was about that age, too. In any other scenario, Prudence would have simply run up to her mother and the woman would have probably given her a box of pads, a cup of soothing tea, and a tight cuddle, but the kid's mother was no longer there and Zelda's help was the next best thing – until Lilith could intervene and do a much better job at parenting than she was capable of, naturally. The way the girl had apologized about that inevitable incident – quietly, almost ashamedly – had broken Zelda's heart: Prudence had reminded her of herself, back when she'd reluctantly confessed to Lilith that her cycle had come back. Such a pity that people, no matter how old they were, felt the need to ask forgiveness for such a natural occurrence.

Hoping that shame could be untaught as well as taught, Zelda wrapped the girl into an awkward hug and said, "There's nothing to be sorry about. You're growing up and your body is changing. Sabrina will be so jealous when she hears about this. I bet she'll wish she'd gotten hers too," Zelda explained, fully believing that the other child would complain about how unfair it was that Prudence's period had come before hers. Prudence sighed, burying her face in the hollow of Zelda's neck. The gesture made something in Zelda's chest glow with warmth. "Come with me," the woman added, headed toward the tiny bathroom, preparing herself to give Prudence a short, child-appropriate talk on periods and reproduction. Of course, the previous Zelda – childless and unlikely to ever get married – would have never expected to find herself in a situation such as that one, but life, as she'd learned, had a way of never quite working out the way she'd planned.

Focused on helping Prudence, Zelda hadn't even noticed that the boat had stopped moving. "Is everything alright down here?" Lilith asked, her tired face peeking into the room. When Prudence nodded and smiled softly, reassured by Zelda's words, the brunette said, "Good. See? I told you that Auntie Zee would know what to do."

Zelda winced at the epithet, but Prudence seemed to like it and, since she _technically_ was Sabrina's biological aunt, she didn't openly protest. She could always threaten Lilith to never speak to her again if she called that one more time later. "She's okay. No cramps or anything, lucky her. Prudence, you can go play with Sabrina, if you want," she said. The girl sprinted out of the bedroom, evidently feeling better already. "Thank you for leaving that to me," she whispered to Lilith once she was sure that Prudence was out of earshot, collapsing on the bed.

"In my defense, I _was_ driving a boat." Lilith crossed her arms, smirking.

"And I was trying not to puke my guts out, so we all had things to worry about."

"But it was a great diversion, wasn't it? I bet you aren't even nauseous anymore." Zelda realized that she wasn't, but she was never going to admit that to Lilith. The other woman stared at her for a moment longer, lost in her own private considerations, and then added, "You did good."

"You weren't even here with us. I could have traumatized her for life. You know I'm not great when it comes to talking to Tweedledum and Tweedledee," she joked, expecting Lilith to contradict her, as it felt good to be told that she wasn't the coldhearted monster she often painted herself as. Not that she truly believed that to be true, but she did like forcing Lilith to compliment her, occasionally.

As she'd anticipated, Lilith said, "I doubt you could have done that much damage. She seemed fine to me." The brunette sat down on the mattress next to her, massaging her temples. Zelda, always too preoccupied with her own woes, hadn't thought that Lilith must have been feeling quite worn-out as well: the faint bags above her cheekbones were darker than usual, yet, despite her exhausted shape, her traveling partner still looked rather striking.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose," Zelda commented, looking away from Lilith, who had caught her staring. "You're a natural, though. I'm not cut out for any of this."

Instead of comforting her as she tended to do, Lilith unsurprisingly took that as an opportunity to be nosy. "You never wanted children?"

The question caught Zelda off guard. "I don't know," she admitted, turning her gaze back on her companion. Lilith's brown locks were all over the place and she smelled vaguely like river water, but all of that only made her more beautiful in Zelda's eyes – wild and mildly disruptive, like the day she'd first met her. "I suppose I secretly hoped that children would sort of happen to me, but Faustus would have made a terrible father. I'd been with him since I was a teenager, so the idea of leaving him to find someone I could start a family with never crossed my mind." Faustus had surely not been father material, but what kind of mother would Zelda have been? Not a great one, most likely.

"You've only ever been with him?" Lilith narrowed her blue eyes, intrigued. Zelda's cheeks must have gained a noticeable shade of red at that, for the other woman immediately said, "I'm sorry if that's an inappropriate question."

"It's fine." There was no point in beating around the bush: Faustus had been her one and only, even though she wished, then, that she'd had the chance to be with different people before that catastrophe. She suddenly wanted Lilith to think her free and unruly as well, even if she was, in reality, anything but untamed. "Yes," she confessed. "He was an old friend of Edward's. I thought he was the one. I mean, he was. Most of the time."

"Most of the time is never enough, though," Lilith said, stroking her own lower lip with her index finger. Zelda wondered, then, if Lilith's skin would taste like icy breezes and sweet river waters too. She pushed that thought out of her head, but it lingered in her brain, loud and rather inconvenient. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I don't really know how your relationship was." She let her body fall next to Zelda's, her face mere inches away from the redhead's, whose blood had begun to pump hot and fast through her veins. "It's just that... I mean, my ex-husband was like that. Mostly nice, until he wasn't. It took me a long time to understand that love shouldn't be like that. That it isn't like that at all."

They both fell silent for a second. Zelda took in the magnitude of that confession, as Lilith had never opened up to her about her relationship with her former husband before. She thought that the woman had told her everything there was to know about her past, but it was clear that Lilith had kept some of her secrets to herself. "Do you want to talk about it?" she offered, aware of her limitations as a motivational speaker. She could listen to her, at least.

"There isn't much else to it," Lilith said. "I could tell you about how I didn't realize that my husband wasn't supposed to beat me periodically until the day he broke two of my ribs during an argument, but you'd think me pretty fucking stupid for that, wouldn't you?" She smiled sadly, but Zelda didn't smile back. Instead, she clasped Lilith's cold hand with a boldness she didn't know she possessed and brought it to her chest, where she knew Lilith could feel the unsteady beat of her heart.

"It wasn't your fault," she said, touching the side of Lilith's face with her other hand. "It wasn't your fault," she repeated, wanting Lilith to know that, to feel it and to believe it. The brunette's eyelids were closed and she pushed her cheek against Zelda's palm, as if to tell her that she enjoyed the sensation; that she was allowed to touch her, to comfort her. Zelda breathed in slowly, the rocking of the waves, much gentler than it had been before, almost lulling her to sleep.

"It's not that I don't like you. Or that I don't want you." Lilith's words had been fast and quiet and Zelda thought she'd imagined them, until the woman spoke again and said, "I know hurt, Zelda. Like the back of my hand." As she said that, she raised her arm and covered Zelda's fingers with her own, stroking them lightly. There was a flickering in Zelda's body, but she swallowed down her hunger. "I know it's good to have distractions at a time like this, but I don't like playing with fire."

Zelda watched her lips as they moved, wondering how it would be like to feel the rough push of Lilith's tongue against hers. "You're not a distraction."

"How do you know that?" Lilith asked, her breath hot against Zelda's skin.

"A distraction is supposed to draw your attention away from everything else for a few instants," Zelda explained, nearly whispering, allowing herself to pretend that she and Lilith were the only people left in that wretched world and that nothing mattered but the weight of Lilith's freezing hand on her own. "You, Lilith, never leave my mind. Every second of every minute of every day, I am thinking of you." Zelda Spellman had thought that openly declaring her love for another woman would make her weak and pathetic, but she'd never felt braver in her whole life than she did in that moment.

Lilith had opened her eyes and she was looking at Zelda with an expression the other woman couldn't decipher. Was it hope? Was it sorrow? Longing, perhaps? "But are you _certain_ of it?" the brunette eventually asked, clasping Zelda's trembling hand. "I need you to be certain. I'll take nothing less than that." She rested her forehead against Zelda's, either not noticing the tiny pearls of sweat covering it or not minding them at all. "It doesn't have to last forever. But it has to mean something."

The redhead sighed, because how could Lilith think it possible for Zelda to lie so close to her – close enough that she could try to kiss her again, if she wanted to – without it meaning more than just _something_? Without it meaning the whole world to her? "I am," she said, her voice breaking a little. "I am certain. No matter what happens in the future, a week or ten years from now, never doubt that I wanted this." Their noses were touching, but Lilith wasn't pulling away. Zelda's heart was threatening to tumble out onto the floor, but her tone was steady when she spoke again. "That I want it, still. That I want you."

The corners of Lilith's lips tilted up and she drew back slightly. Zelda stared into her companion's eyes and saw a different kind of warmness in them, but she didn't have much time to ponder the meaning behind that gaze, for Lilith had gently lifted her head and was, at last, about to kiss her. A long-awaited first kiss that would have certainly happened, had Sabrina not stormed into that room like a bull in a china shop at the worst possible time. "Lilith! Zelda!" the child shrieked, out of breath.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Zelda murmured, slapping her forehead so hard that a lock of ginger hair fell on her face. Lilith, with her casual blasphemies and curse words, was a bad influence on her. Lilith snorted, planting a swift kiss on Zelda's temple – much less romantic than what Zelda had hoped for, but it still sent a shiver of want down her spine. Unfortunately, Sabrina and her unending mischiefs evidently had other plans. "What do you need?" she yelled, not even attempting to hide her annoyance. Would she ever have fifteen consecutive minutes of well-deserved peace?

"There are two men outside. On the riverbank," Sabrina said. She seemed uncharacteristically worried, her eyes wide and frightened. "They have a shotgun." Having heard that, both Zelda and Lilith darted out of the room, their second almost-kiss already a distant memory.


	14. Chapter 14

"We mean no harm," one of the two men said, arms raised in an attempt to show Zelda and the rest of her crew that he had no intention of hurting them. His companion placed his weapon – an old hunting rifle, its handle scratched and caked in mud – on the ground and stepped away from it, bowing his head.

"Better safe than sorry," Lilith explained, lifting the gun she'd taken out of her bag before rushing to the deck, her index finger kept carefully away from the trigger. Sabrina and Prudence were standing behind her, frozen. "I won't use it, but we have kids to protect. We can't take any chances." Zelda noticed Lilith's use of the plural and felt herself swell with bravery. She stepped in front of the girls, adding an extra human layer between them and the unknown men on land.

"Understandable," the second man said, though the first one seemed to be about to protest. "We're only passing through. We aren't here to hurt anyone."

"Neither are we," Lilith said, her voice calm and steady. "Is there anything that you want?" she then asked, the blue veins of the hand that was holding the gun bulging slightly. Zelda looked away, returning her attention to the two men.

The two strangers were staring at the group with curiosity plastered across their dirt-covered faces: a fair reaction, as encountering other survivors wasn't a frequent occurrence and Lilith and Zelda – two middle-aged women piloting a large narrowboat and taking care of two young girls who looked nothing alike – must have been a rather bizarre sight. As understandable as they were, Zelda was irked by the men's looks of disbelief: weirder families and coalitions had certainly been formed across the globe during those first post-societal months and the men themselves looked like something out of a dystopian novel, so why was she getting the impression that their eyes were holding much judgment? It could have been nothing more than that, of course: a silly feeling born from the teachings of sin and condemnation that had been imparted upon her since childhood and by the deeply-rooted belief that someone – either God or other people – would always be there to condemn her. Could the men see that the redheaded woman in front of them had almost kissed the wild-haired brunette mere minutes before? That she and Sabrina were related? That Zelda, Lilith, Sabrina, and Prudence had – with few ups and quite a lot of downs – began to create, week after week, something remarkably close to a family?

"Provisions," the first man said, his booming voice interrupting Zelda's reflections. Despite his loud tone and tall stature, he appeared to be thin and frail – a kind of weakness Zelda knew well, caused by sleepless nights and fretful days. "We're running low on canned food and we have a long way ahead of us. We could trade with you, if you have anything to spare."

"Where are you headed?" Lilith inquired, ignoring the stranger's request. Zelda understood that her partner had yet to decide if the men could be trusted.

"An old friend and I built a bunker in these woods. That was years ago, so my memory is a bit foggy. We're trying to find it." They had run into some sort of doomsday preppers, at last. "Listen, we don't want to travel with you or anything," the stranger reassured them, but Zelda noticed a smirk on his face as he pronounced the words. He probably believed that Zelda and her group wouldn't last much longer in the forest, yet he was the one begging for food. Typical. "You don't have to worry about us following you. We're just tired of eating berries and roasted squirrels."

The mention of cooked pseudo-rats made Zelda's stomach swirl again and she swallowed down bile, bringing a finger to her mouth. Silently, Sabrina stepped closer to her, grabbing her other hand and squeezing it gently. Zelda squeezed back, inhaling deeply. "I guess we could do a trade," Lilith said, breaking the silence that had followed the man's last sentence. "What are you offering?"

"We have a bunch of useless crap," the second man said, opening his backpack and rummaging through it. "Lighters, cigarettes, a bottle of vodka that tastes like hair dye, a ragged coat. Some painkillers, too."

"I know someone who would certainly enjoy those cigarettes." Zelda blushed at that, a little embarrassed by her small vice and grateful that Lilith had thought of her. "Anything else?" Lilith asked, carrying on the negotiations. Zelda didn't intervene, trusting the other woman's judgment completely and preferring to comfort the girls: Prudence was still trembling lightly, while Sabrina was leaning quietly against Zelda's hip, observing the exchange that was taking place in front of her with an inquisitive gaze. Zelda couldn't blame the child for her fascination with the smoothness with which Lilith was once again saving the day.

"Thank you very much," the men said almost in unison after Lilith had handed some canned goods and just-add-water products over to them, essentially throwing them from the deck of the boat in order to keep a certain distance between the strangers and her group.

"You're welcome," Lilith replied, looking over her shoulder and meeting Zelda's eye. The redhead nodded, letting her know that trading with those strangers had been the right call to make, and Lilith seemed soothed by the gesture, possibly delighted that they were on the same page and that no big fight was awaiting her that night.

"Right, then. You all take care," one of the two men said, stuffing their new provisions into his bag. "Some weird shit is going on around here."

"What do you mean?" Zelda asked, her breath hitching. Lilith swallowed too, so hard that Zelda saw her throat move.

The two men exchanged a quick glance and the taller one said, "We haven't seen any of it firsthand, so you should take this with a grain of salt." He lowered his voice, as if they might be overheard, though Zelda knew that there was no one else around. Or so she hoped. "We met a guy a few weeks ago. Strange dude, for sure. He looked all scrawny, so we gave him some of our supplies and he ate like a starving man. He didn't share much about his life, but we pressured him a little and he confessed that he'd escaped from some kind of small-town militia."

"We asked him if he would like to join us, but he freaked out and ran away," the other man explained, shrugging. Was it possible that they were talking about the same lone survivor who had once threatened Zelda with a knife? She shivered, shaking her head. No point in dwelling in the past. "He kept saying that someone was after him and that he would end up dead if they found him. He was a bit fucked in the head, I reckon." He lifted his rifle from the ground and turned his back on the boat. His traveling partner had started to walk away, not paying any more attention to the vessel and its odd crew. "It was probably a load of bullshit, but I'd be careful, if I were you."

"We will be. Thank you," Lilith said, licking her lips. "Good luck."

"You too," the stranger said, but he and his companion had begun to disappear from sight, engulfed by the tall weeds and dark shadows that were gathering over the land, and Zelda barely heard him as he vanished into the forest.

She turned toward Lilith, but the brunette had already reached her side and she was talking to the girls, crouched down. "Thank you for warning us. You were such brave lookouts." She smiled, but Zelda, who had spent every waking hour with that woman since the day she'd knocked on her door, knew that the encounter had unsettled her as well. "Why don't you go inside and get yourselves something to eat? It's getting late."

The kids nodded and rushed inside the cockpit, clinging onto each other in a way that made Zelda think of little koalas. The stress of that unexpected rendezvous had made her nausea resurface and Zelda moved away from Lilith, her walk unsteady. She soon found herself leaning against the edge of the boat, pondering the strangers' warning as she looked up at the starry sky. Out of nowhere, she felt a familiar hand on the small of her back, rubbing circles over her spine. "Are you alright?"

"Are you asking me that because you're afraid that I might throw up again?"

"Maybe." Lilith cocked her eyebrow, clicking her tongue. Zelda spun back in her direction, drawing in a long breath. "I'm here to help, if do you need to."

"How chivalrous," Zelda joked, but she was touched by Lilith's concern. Not many people had offered her a helping hand during unpleasant moments such as that one. A newborn heat was spreading through her, but seasickness and bumping into eccentric men spreading ominous tales had nothing to do with it. "I'm feeling fine, but my stomach has seen better days, if you really must know." She paused, wondering if they should talk about what the preppers had told them. It wasn't like they could do much about it that night, in any case. "You must think me very attractive right now. Motion sickness and all," she said, instead.

Lilith's blue eyes were piercing her through and through and she couldn't have looked away from her even if she'd wanted to. The other woman's lips were turned faintly upward, dry and cracked by the cool breeze that was coming off the murky waters, but still red and inviting. Suddenly, Lilith clasped Zelda's hand, holding it tightly against her chest, and said, "Enough is enough."

They moved quickly across the deck, Zelda's heartbeat growing louder in her ears, in her chest, in her bones. Lilith's fingers clutching her wrist, Zelda asked herself if the other woman could sense it, too; if the blood flowing through her veins was no longer something that only Zelda was aware of, but a thing that Lilith could feel as well, rushing loudly through aortas and small ventricles, reaching her most hidden places. She needed Lilith to know how much her touch meant to her; how deeply she craved it, a warmness blossoming inside the deepest parts of her being whenever she stood near the brunette, smelling the jasmine scent of her hair, the pleasant tang of her sweat. She wanted Lilith to _know_ her: her past, her mind, her soul, the throbbing warmth of her skin and core, her trespasses and sorrows, as if Lilith were God and Zelda a lapsed churchgoer, begging for love and forgiveness. Except, there was nothing to beg for, for Lilith was no vengeful deity and she was willing to love Zelda openly, without tricks or little clauses written in fine prints at the bottom of contracts. There was no mercy to be asked for, Zelda learned, as long as one loved freely and without shame.

"Zelda and I need to talk," Lilith told the girls as they entered the cockpit, her swift words leaving no room for questions. Sabrina and Prudence looked at the two women with puzzled expressions, but their confusion only lasted a few instants and they soon returned to their respective activities. "Eat your dinner and don't get into trouble. Can you do that?" Lilith asked, her breathing quickened.

"We never get into trouble," Sabrina answered, her forearm shoved into a large jar of strawberry jam.

"Right, and I'm the Queen of England," Lilith said, nudging Zelda toward the bedroom. Zelda repressed her need to reproach the child for her unhealthy eating choices, having far different plans for her evening.

Once the door closed behind them, Zelda felt a fiery ache in her lower body and was nearly ashamed of its ferocity. When Lilith ran her long fingers through her ginger hair, a noise close to a whimper burst out of her throat and she was left breathless, gasping for air. "Please," she whispered, pressing her figure against Lilith's, guiding her hands to her breasts, her nipples as hard as her thighs were damp.

Lilith gestured toward the bed and Zelda complied. "Good girl," Lilith said. Another whine left Zelda's mouth, but the brunette covered it with her palm before it could produce any other sounds. "You'll have to be quieter," she told Zelda, her thumb tracing the soft line of her jaw. "Can you do that?"

"I don't make promises I can't keep," Zelda said.

Lilith smirked, planting a wet kiss on Zelda's neck. The redhead shivered, pulling her in. "Maybe that's for the best," Lilith murmured, her teeth delicately biting Zelda's earlobe. "I'd love to hear you moan."

Lilith left a trail of kisses along Zelda's collarbone, at the underside of her jaw, at the hollow below her ear, slow and ritualistic, but what Zelda craved the most was the taste of Lilith's tongue inside her mouth, touching hers. She wanted to devour and be devoured; to conquer and be conquered. Once Lilith began her descent toward Zelda's core, she gently pulled at the woman's hair, gesturing at her to look up. When Lilith raised her head and met Zelda's gaze, her eyes were filled with want. "Kiss me, first," the redhead murmured, cupping the other's face. "Kiss me," she repeated, though Lilith didn't need to be told twice and her mouth was already on hers, their first kiss far hastier and warmer than how Zelda had imagined it.

Gradually, Lilith started to press herself against Zelda, her thigh pushed between both of hers. The act, so simple and instinctive, caused Zelda to bite into Lilith's lower lip. Lilith moaned softly against her mouth – a sound Zelda would hear in her most private dreams for the rest of her life – and Zelda, guided by an instinct so primitive and visceral that it made her wonder how had she ever doubted her attraction toward other women, began to grind up and down against Lilith's thigh. The gesture itself came to her naturally: it was like riding a bike, if the bike were a woman, and if bikes made Zelda unbelievably aroused. Lilith was restlessly stroking Zelda's damp skin and pressing her knee between her legs, creating so much friction that Zelda thought she would come from that action alone, until the woman's hand slid into her pants and she asked, "May I?"

Of course, Zelda wanted to say, for there was nothing she craved more than Lilith's firm fingers stroking her lower belly, circling her navel before reaching her core. But Zelda didn't speak, certain that opening her mouth would have resulted in nothing but low whimpers of delight, and merely nodded, locking eyes with Lilith before the woman slid her middle and ring fingers inside her. At that, Zelda groaned, the sound muffled by Lilith's lips on her own. Her cheeks were growing hotter with each stroke of Lilith's fingers, each kiss, each half-repressed whine that begged to escape her body. Suddenly, Lilith pushed in deeper and Zelda found herself grinding against the woman's hand, replicating movements she knew well, though never like that. Sex had never felt that good; it had never made her feel so whole. Panting, Zelda closed her eyes, colors swirling on the inside of her eyelids, until her chest became tighter and the tingling in her belly more intense. When Lilith bit the side of Zelda's neck, her teeth grating against her soft skin, and her slick fingertips started moving rhythmically in a come-hither motion, Zelda let the long-awaited spasms of pleasure overtake her, coming, fast and unapologetically, around Lilith's wet fingers, sliding in and out of her with a lust that felt almost overwhelming.

Zelda fell back on the bed, gasping too hard to say anything, but intending to reciprocate. She kissed Lilith, slowly, and the other woman dove deeper into the kiss, caressing the back of Zelda's head with such tenderness that Zelda felt a known pressure behind her sinuses and a few tears trickled down her eyes. Yet, when Zelda lifted Lilith's shirt, beginning to lightly pinch and stroke her nipples with her mouth, the brunette stopped her, taking Zelda's face into her hands and brushing her lips against her forehead. "Not yet," she whispered. "Give me some time."

Zelda nearly protested, but then thought of Lilith's ex-husband, of her confessions of hurt and distrust, and a flicker of pain shot through her heart. "Of course," she said, burying her face in Lilith's mane of brown hair, taking in the bittersweet smell of sweat and sex. "Whenever you're ready," she added, her legs still shaking, her heartbeat rapid and loud. "What do we do now?" she then asked, almost timidly, observing a dark lock of Lilith's hair she'd curled around her thumb.

She'd wanted Lilith to tell her where they would go from there and how they would act around each other, around the girls; if they could have sex again, in the near or distant future, and, if yes, Zelda would have very much liked to know exactly when, because it had been a couple of minutes since her most recent orgasm and she was already craving another one, and then one more, until she could no longer feel the lower part of her body and the dark thoughts swirling around her brain. Mostly, she needed to know if Lilith was there to stay. If she was in it for the long haul. But, instead of giving her the straightforward answer she required, Lilith – always much more focused on living in the now than Zelda was – laughed softly and said, "I suppose we have about ten more minutes before the girls set something on fire and come look for us." She planted a kiss on Zelda's cheek and furtively stroked her backside, making the redhead blush like a schoolgirl. "Can I interest you in a short post-coital nap?"

Taking into account all the activities of that evening, a nap didn't sound like such a terrible idea. They were no tireless twenty-year-olds anymore, after all. "I would like that."

"As long as you don't snore." Lilith smirked, turning in Zelda's direction so that the tips of their noses were touching.

"Once again, I don't snore," Zelda protested, hardly believing that herself. She picked her warm coat up from the floor and spread it over their bodies, turning off the portable lamp on the bedside table next to her. Allowing her eyelids to droop, she scooted closer toward Lilith, conscious that their rest would likely be interrupted by two screaming children very soon, but grateful for each instant she got to spend next to the other woman, their legs entangled, their arms entwined, their hearts full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to preface this by saying that writing sex scenes in English isn't exactly my specialty, but I didn't want to spoil the fact that they were finally going to shag, so I simply chose to leave you all in the dark. Anyway, they kissed! And fucked! And it only took them fourteen chapters! Some may say it actually happened too quickly for a slow-burn story, but I was getting the female equivalent of blue balls and I couldn't take it any longer. Hope you enjoyed this and I will see you in a week or so!


	15. Chapter 15

Zelda was awakened by the sound of wooden floorboards squeaking under the weight of children's feet, followed by giggles and quiet fits of laughter. Lazily opening her eyes, she found herself pressed against Lilith's chest, the woman's arm wrapping her into a tight, unconscious hug. Lilith's body gave off an inviting warmth and Zelda wished they could remain locked in that embrace for hours and hours, but two pairs of brown eyes were staring at them in amusement, their young owners evidently set on ruining that pleasant moment. "What's wrong?" Zelda asked, guessing that the girls must have been up to no good – which, in all fairness, was generally a correct assumption.

"You asked us to wake you up at nine o'clock," Sabrina explained, a mischievous smile crossing her face. She pointed at Lilith's toned arm, which was firmly holding Zelda's upper body, and winked at her. "You two look pretty cute together, by the way." Zelda huffed, pretending to ignore whatever the child might have been suggesting, but couldn't keep herself from blushing slightly, the corners of her own mouth turning up a little.

"It's technically a quarter to ten, but we overslept," Prudence added.

That was certainly uncommon, as Lilith tended to arise at the crack of dawn and inevitably force Zelda to get up with her, but driving that boat along the narrow river for three consecutive days had taken a toll on the brunette and her tiredness was understandable. "Thank you," Zelda mumbled, not really meaning it. She could have used some more sleep. "We'll be up in a minute."

"Take your time." Sabrina smiled sardonically and left the room in a hurry, Prudence trotting behind her, both of them giggling.

Zelda laid her head back on her pillow, sighing. They'd almost reached the next big city before the vast forest that surrounded her sister's farm and, while she was glad that their journey was nearly over, she wondered if some part of her would ever miss it: not the dangerous voyage across small towns and dark woods per se, but the closeness that had blossomed between her and Lilith during that unexpected trip. She knew that the other woman intended on settling down as well, but they hadn't discussed their plans for the future since the evening Zelda had found out about Sabrina's identity – a piece of information the girl in question wasn't aware of, yet – and, truth be told, she was afraid that she would not like Lilith's answer if she'd dared to ask. They'd barely kissed again after that first night together – shyly and in secret, not wanting Prudence and Sabrina to know about their newborn liaison just yet – and Zelda wondered if, maybe, Lilith had come to regret what they'd done. Which was silly, she considered, remembering the comfortable weight of Lilith's arm resting on top of hers, but Zelda, as always, couldn't help but doubt.

Lilith stirred, rubbing her eyelids. "Hi," Zelda said, unable to stop herself from smiling. Lilith's features were puffed up with sleep, her cheeks crimson. "Did you sleep well?"

Lilith muttered something incoherent, burying her face under the pile of wool blankets they'd found stashed away in the boat's utility closet, but then cleared her throat and said, "Not really. I have a killer headache. It's colder than a witch's tit in here."

"Is it? I didn't notice," Zelda commented, gently touching Lilith's jaw, but the skin under her fingertips was hotter than what she'd expected. That was when she first saw sweat trickling down the woman's temples in large drops and she realized that the heat Lilith's body was emanating was greater than usual. "Good God, you're hot."

"Oh, thank you." Lilith grinned, but kept her eyes closed. "You're not so bad yourself."

"No, Lilith. You're burning," Zelda clarified, her tone higher by an octave. "It feels like your forehead is on fire. Are you running a fever?"

"That would explain the weird chills I was getting all night." Paying closer attention, Zelda could see that she was shivering lightly. "I thought it was just your presence."

"I'm not kidding." Zelda immediately sat up, slithering from under the covers. Where was her first-aid kit? She'd packed some antibiotics before leaving her home, but she wasn't sure that Lilith truly needed them at that stage. She'd have to ask the girls to fetch her bag for her, just in case. "This is the worst time for you to be getting a temperature."

"As opposed to all the other times when it was perfectly fine for me to get sick, you mean?" Lilith let out a bitter laugh. "Like when that lunatic threatened you with a knife? Or, even better, when we ran into Prudence and Sabrina after barely getting away from the bad guys with guns driving that jeep?"

"You shouldn't joke about this," Zelda said. Then, half-whispering, she added, "I'm worried."

Lilith's expression turned softer when her blue eyes met Zelda's and she stretched out her arm to touch the redhead's wrist. She'd meant it to be a reassuring gesture, but Zelda could only focus on how warm the woman's fingers were, drawing circles on her own cold skin. "My point is that we've been through worse things than a fever, Zelda. I'll be fine." For the first time since they'd known each other, Zelda caught a hint of insincerity in her voice. Lilith shifted her gaze away from her. "I wouldn't mind an aspirin and a glass of water, though."

At that, Zelda leaped out of the bedroom to get all the essentials: her filtered water bottle, several different brands of painkillers, all the coats she could find, and Lilith's copy of _Orlando_. When she returned, Lilith was lying on her back, her mouth hanging partially open. "Here," Zelda said, handing her the bottle. "You need to stay hydrated."

Lilith nodded, licking her cracked lips. "Thank you. I think I will take a nap."

"Good," Zelda said, but she didn't move. It was as if her feet were stuck in barrels of cement; as if she feared, deep down, that something terrible would happen to Lilith if she left that room. She remained seated on the edge of the bed, uncomfortably fidgeting with the hem of her robe.

"While I appreciate your concern, you don't have to be at my deathbed. Unless you're planning on getting me to confess my sins, but that might take us a while."

"Stop saying things like that." Tears began to blur Zelda's vision and a sizeable knot had formed in her throat. Even thinking about the possibility of losing Lilith made her lungs ache. "Please."

"I'm sorry," Lilith said, exhaling. She coughed quietly and swallowed a sip of water. "I'll get well in no time, but you should really check on the girls. Plus, this could be contagious and I don't want you to catch it."

"You'll call me if you need anything?" Zelda asked, but her request had sounded more like an order. A plea, even. "I'll be back soon."

"Of course," Lilith said, turning on her side.

As she walked toward the deck, Zelda felt an odd humming in her bones and a heavy feeling in her head. She steadied herself on the banister, repeating to herself, over and over, that Lilith would be alright; that things had always worked out for them in the end, in one way or another. She reached the kids, who were trying to fish with an old fishing rod they'd stumbled upon in a hunter's cabin days before, and she decided to join them in their attempt, hoping that the activity would distract her for a while. To her own surprise, they were able to catch some strange-looking fish that, after having been carefully gutted and overcooked to the point of being barely recognizable, appeared to be somewhat edible. The morning went by quickly: by midday, she'd checked on Lilith twice, mid-fishing, but the woman had been sleeping soundly both times and she hadn't had the heart to disturb her. At almost two in the afternoon, she asked Prudence to go downstairs to see if the brunette needed anything. The girl returned a minute later, a shade of anxiety crossing her thin face, and said, "I think Lilith's sick. Like, really sick."

Hearing that, Zelda's heart throbbed behind her ribs. "What do you mean?" she asked, but she was already on the move, speeding in the direction of the bedroom.

"She said not to call you, but she looks _so_ pale," Prudence said, her voice as shaky as her little limbs. "Is she going to die?"

"She's not!" Zelda all but screamed, stopping dead in her tracks. When she saw that Prudence was desperately trying not to burst into tears, she felt a pang of guilt and crouched down, gently grabbing the child by the shoulders. "It's just a temperature, Prudence. Nothing to worry about," she explained. "I need you and Sabrina to be on your best behavior while I take care of her. Can you do that?"

"Yes," Prudence promised. Unexpectedly, she lurched forward and wrapped her trembling arms around Zelda's neck. After the initial shock, Zelda hugged her back. "She's going to be okay," Prudence said, as if to reassure both the frenzied adult in front of her and herself; as if saying the words out loud would make them true. Zelda, on her part, hoped that it would.

"Lilith," Zelda whispered, nearing the bed after Prudence had gone back on the deck, but she received no answer. She caressed the woman's temple, the knot in her throat growing larger as she stared at her gaunt features: Lilith's skin looked paler than Zelda's own, with the exception of the dark bags under her eyes, which had acquired a sickly yellow tint, and the redness of her cheekbones. "It's me," she said.

Lilith murmured something in response, but Zelda couldn't catch it. She lifted up the covers and saw that Lilith's clothes were drenched in sweat, which probably meant that her antibodies were fighting off whatever sickness she'd caught, but it didn't make Zelda feel any calmer. What if the fever spiked? Her medical knowledge was limited; her sister, on the other hand, would certainly know what to do, but her house was several miles away from their position and there was no way that they could reach it on time if Lilith's condition worsened. As Zelda didn't have the faintest clue of how to pilot a boat and venturing out by foot did not sound like such a great idea in that precise instant, her group was stuck in that part of the forest for the foreseeable future. Suddenly, Lilith sat up and brought a hand to her mouth, interrupting Zelda's stream of thoughts. Swiftly, the redhead grabbed Lilith's red bucket – which had proven itself useful in more occasions than they could ever have expected – and rubbed her back as she ungraciously threw up in it, though there wasn't much in her stomach to dispose of.

"I'm so sorry," Lilith mumbled, the white of her eyes bloodshot. "I don't feel well," she said.

"It's okay. I know," Zelda replied, biting her lower lip to prevent herself from crying. Lilith was limp in her arms and her body felt like a furnace. "Lie back down for me. Slowly."

Lilith clearly didn't have enough fight in her to make a fuss about Zelda's overprotective manners and she did as she was told. Zelda forced her to drink some more water before pouring some of it on a rag and placing it on the other woman's forehead. She allowed herself to observe her, then: the lively, energetic Lilith she knew had been reduced to a fragile shell of her usual self and Zelda couldn't push the fear that the old one might not come back out of her mind. Zelda's chest ached at that thought and Lilith, as if on cue, let out a hard cough. It was a childish notion, perhaps, but that coincidence made Zelda wonder if she and Lilith were connected, in a way; if a thin, invisible string had been tying them together since long before their first meeting. All her frantic worrying over the future vanished at once and she knew, then, that she would have followed her loud, insolent traveling partner to the end of the world, had she asked her to; for that to happen, however, she needed her to get better, because she couldn't imagine going through the rest of her life without Lilith.

The brunette coughed again, pulling at Zelda's sleeve. "Over there," she whispered, pointing at her calf.

Zelda stared at her confusingly, but then noticed a large gash on Lilith's left leg, spurting thick black blood. "What is this?" Zelda asked, but she didn't need to hear Lilith's answer to know that the infected wound was the cause of that fever. It looked as if Lilith had tried to bandage it with a rag, but that temporary solution left much to be desired. "Jesus Christ, Lilith! Why didn't you ask for help?"

"I didn't want to worry you," Lilith explained, taking in an unsteady breath. "I sliced my leg on an exposed nail, but I thought I had it under control. Not my best decision."

Zelda both wanted to strangle that woman and wrap her arms around her tightly enough to break her bones. "I'll have to clean this and get a new bandage," she said, moving her hand to Lilith's thigh and leaving it there. Out of all the creatures left on that planet, she couldn't believe that her heart had decided to fall for the one in front of her. "Never hide things like this from me again," she pleaded, tenderly cupping Lilith's face.

"I won't," Lilith promised. "Can you help me?"

"Yes," Zelda said, almost choking on a sob. She was surprised that Lilith had even felt the need to ask her that: to her, there was no question as to whether she would help the other woman or not, even if her illness had been the result of her own doing. In truth, Zelda would have ripped her own heart out of her chest and handed it to Lilith, had she wanted her to. Unwilling to let her go completely scot-free, she added, "If anything happens because you didn't tell me about this sooner, I will kill you with my bare hands."

"I would probably deserve that," Lilith joked, but her eyebrows were furrowed in a deep frown and Zelda understood that the time had come for her to stop chastising her partner and start working on that nasty wound.

Zelda did the best she could with the antibiotic ointment she'd packed in her first-aid kit, but, even after she'd used long strips of sterilized gauze to wrap Lilith's injured calf, her companion was far from out of the woods: the infection was still there and the fever refused to leave Lilith's body, which began to shiver convulsively as night approached. The thought that Lilith might have contracted tetanus slipped in and out of Zelda's brain like a serial intruder, ugly and unwanted. She kept her wrapped in warm blankets and shooed the children away when they attempted to sneak into the bedroom: while she shared their concern, she knew that they were better off away from Lilith, as Zelda couldn't be perfectly sure that the coughing and nausea weren't contagious – though she did hope that they were merely unpleasant side effects and nothing more. She kept vigil all night, offering Lilith a sip of water every two hours and wiping her forehead with cold compresses whenever she gave signs of discomfort. Her eyes never left the brunette and she pushed her weariness aside, focused on something much more important than getting a few hours of sleep. It pained her to see her like that and she wished she could take away her pain and make it her own, but she had no such power, and the only thing left for her to do was to wait. Wait and assist. Wait and comfort. Wait and pray.

At dawn, Zelda's body betrayed her and she drifted off to sleep, exhausted. When she woke up, Lilith's hand was lying on her chest. Her heartbeat, pulsing in the tips of her fingers, was matching Zelda's, loud and uneven. Before Lilith could utter a single word, Zelda turned to face her and asked her, "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Lilith said, smiling weakly. Her face was ashen, but the sickly pallor of the day before had started to disappear and, mild grogginess aside, she seemed to be lucid. "Not great, clearly, but better. Thanks to you."

Zelda felt her own chin tremble, but the tears came as a relief. "I thought I was going to lose you," she confessed, swallowing thickly.

"Impossible," Lilith said. Water crept out of Zelda's eyes, but Lilith's hand was there to wipe away every drop. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily. I'm like a weed."

"Shut up." By then, Zelda didn't know if the sounds leaving her throat were bursts of nervous laughter or relieved wails. She let Lilith's arms close around her, not minding the sweat: all she wanted was to touch her soft skin and know that she was still there; that she was real and well and beautiful and hers. "I'm never going to forgive you for this."

Lilith snorted and held her closer. "That's a little dramatic, don't you think?"

"Shut up," she repeated, but it was no secret to the two of them that Zelda wished that she would, on the contrary, keep hearing Lilith's voice for a very, very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a little longer than planned to write this new chapter, but I hope it was worth the wait! Considering that canon!Lilith didn't seek help until she was literally giving birth, I thought that post-apocalyptic!Lilith hiding an infected wound until she has no choice but to tell Zelda would be pretty believable. See you when I manage to write some more!


End file.
